Challenges and Opportunities in Blockchain Tech by Prof. Krishnamachari, USC

Blockchain and related technologies have created a lot of excitement and there are many innovative ideas in the air to apply them to various domains. I'll attempt to give an overview of where the state of the art in terms of technology is and several challenges that remain to be addressed from a technical perspective including reducing transaction costs, improving transaction volumes, balancing anonymity with AML regulations, reducing price volatility and speculation, increasing software security, interoperability, and true decentralization. I will also talk about some ongoing research from my group on integrating distributed ledger technologies with network protocols.

Speaker Bio: Bhaskar Krishnamachari is Ming Hsieh Faculty Fellow and Professor in Electrical Engineering with a joint appointment in Computer Science at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. He is the Director of the USC Viterbi Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and the Internet of Things, as well as the Autonomous Networks Research Group. He has co-authored over 300 papers that have been collectively cited over 20,000 times. He is the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, and the ASEE Terman Award for outstanding EE educators. He was listed in Popular Science Magazine's "Brilliant 10" in 2015, and in the TR-35 list of top 35 innovators under 35 in 2011.