Research Postgraduate Student Fellows
Janos Barberis skilfully combines academic rigour with unrivalled entrepreneurial spirit. He has an established track record in the FinTech and RegTech Industry (named 32nd Most Powerful Dealmaker globally, Institutional Investors, 2018) and in academia (13th legal scholar in the world, SSRN, 2020). Janos current research focus is at the intersection of BigTech, Competition and Financial Services. Over the years, he accelerated 49 startups, trained 100,000 people online, designed 5 online courses, edited 3 books and published 13 academic papers. He previously was on the youngest board member of the WEF and SFC FinTech committees.
Sangita Gazi is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong (HKU). Before coming to HKU, she completed an International LLM from Duke University School of Law (Duke Law) in the United States. During her LLM at Duke Law, she mainly focused on the interdisciplinary courses converging law, finance, and technology. In today’s world, technology is redefining the legal profession. The impacts of emerging technologies like blockchain in the payments system, the role of AI and big data, the growth of FinTech/RegTech in the financial system — all these indicate that technologies are going to have a game-changing impact in the future. During her PhD at HKU, she will be researching the cross-border aspects of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) under the supervision of Professor Douglas Arner. Previously, she worked as an Assistant Legal Advisor at the US Department of Justice in the US Embassy Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Zhihang Jiang, is a PhD candidate at the University of Hong Kong. He obtained an LLB from Zhongnan University of Economics and Law and an LLM from London School of Economics and Political Science. His recent research interests mainly focus on regulatory theories in FinTech context and FinTech credit (especially online lending). He had a working experience in investment banking before coming to HKU.
Alessandro Di Lullo is a PhD candidate at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), working in the areas of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC), Monetary Policy and FinTech. He has been involved in some of the very first fintech education initiatives in the world by contributing to the HKU FinTech MOOC (80,000+ learners to date), curating the teaching resources for Asia’s 1st MBA FinTech course at HKU, and launching the 1st International Master in FinTech in Italy, at LUMSA University of Rome. He also led the first FinTech & Entrepreneurial Finance course at EDHEC Business School. Professionally, he worked as Director for Academia & Entrepreneurship at CFTE, the leading education platform focused on digital finance with operations in London, Hong Kong, Singapore and Abu Dhabi. He also contributed to the best-seller “The Future of Finance” published by Palgrave Macmillan.
Eriks K. Selga is a PhD candidate in Law at the University of Hong Kong, where he focuses his research on AML, regulatory innovation, and FinTech generally. He is also an associate scholar at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and a visiting researcher at the Latvian Institute of International Affairs.
Carmen Yam is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Law of the University of Hong Kong and a recipient of the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship and HKU Presidential PhD Scholarship. Her doctoral research focuses on intellectual property, e-commerce and financial law amid the digital age. In recent years, she has been invited to give lectures at the faculty on alternative financial law. Carmen holds an LLB from the University of Birmingham where she graduated with First-class Honours and was ranked first in the intellectual property law cohort of her year. She also holds an LLM from the University of Hong Kong where she was appointed as a student research assistant. In 2018, Carmen was invited by the Intellectual Property Department of the HKSAR Government to act as an Intellectual Property Ambassador to give seminars and sharing on the knowledge and development of intellectual property. Prior to joining academia, she worked at Linklaters in Hong Kong.
