Bio
Andreas Veneris is a Connaught Scholar and professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, cross-appointed with the Department of Computer Science and the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto. He obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Previously, he held joint faculty positions with the Athens University of Economics and Business (Department of Informatics, 2006–2016) and with the University of Tokyo (Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, 2010–2011). For more than 20 years, he worked in the field of computer-automated design for very large-scale integration synthesis, verification and debugging using formal methods, publishing more than 120 conference and journal papers. Today, he focuses on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), mechanism/economic design of distributed systems, formal methods for smart-contract verification, and techno-legal blockchain policy/regulatory questions. In February 2021, his work with the Bank of Canada became public, proposing Canada’s central bank digital Loonie — the first work of its kind that presented a comprehensive technological, regulatory/legal and economic model for a CBDC. On March 1, 2022, he was acknowledged for his contributions on a classified report by the Hoover Institution, prefaced by former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, titled Digital Currencies: The US, China, And The World At A Crossroads; a week later, former US President Joe Biden signed Executive Order 14607 following many recommendations of this report. Andreas engages with many Group of Twenty central banks on the topic of CBDCs and Web 3.0, and his work has been featured in publications by the Bank for International Settlements and the International Monetary Fund, among others.