We advance the technologies that underpin the next generation of digital infrastructure and services. Our research spans decentralised systems, blockchain, cryptography, security, privacy, and trusted computing, with applications in finance, Web3, and autonomous AI systems. We develop secure, scalable, and resilient systems, enabling people, organisations, and intelligent agents to interact, collaborate, and exchange information and value without relying on a single trusted authority. By combining fundamental research with real-world deployment and collaborating with industry, government, and regulators on governance and standards, we aim to build a more trustworthy, resilient, and accountable digital future.
Our research spans across multidisciplinary research
This subtheme advances the core technologies that enable secure, scalable, and resilient decentralised digital systems. It includes blockchain protocols, distributed consensus, smart contracts, cryptography, trusted computing, confidential computing, secure distributed systems, interoperability, and fault tolerance. The focus is on building digital infrastructure that can operate reliably across organisations, users, machines, and services without relying on a single central authority.
This research strengthens the foundations of trusted digital infrastructure by improving security, scalability, privacy, resilience, and interoperability. It enables industry and government to build dependable platforms for finance, identity, data sharing, Web3 services, AI coordination, public services, and critical infrastructure.
Associate Professor Jiangshan Yu, Lecturer Rahul Gopinath, Professor Vincent Gramoli, Lecturer Liyi Zhou, Lecturer Sri AravindaKrishnan Thyagarajan, Associate Professor Qiang Tang, Professor Albert Zomaya
This subtheme explores the future of digital finance, Web3 platforms, programmable money, decentralised finance, digital assets, smart contracts, token systems, and online economic ecosystems. It connects blockchain and decentralised infrastructure research with industry-facing innovation in payments, banking, capital markets, insurance, platform economies, creator economies, and new models of digital ownership and value exchange.
This research enables more transparent, efficient, and programmable financial and digital market infrastructure. It helps industry design secure payment systems, digital asset platforms, automated settlement mechanisms, and new Web3 services while addressing challenges in trust, regulation, governance, security, and adoption.
Associate Professor Jiangshan Yu, Professor Vincent Gramoli, Associate Professor Qiang Tang
This subtheme investigates how decentralised technologies can support AI agents, autonomous services, distributed intelligence, and machine-to-machine coordination. It includes secure agent interaction, decentralised AI infrastructure, provenance for AI systems, auditability, automated negotiation, resilient decision-making, and trusted execution across organisational, technical, and jurisdictional boundaries.
This research supports the next generation of trustworthy autonomous digital infrastructure. It enables AI systems, robots, and digital agents to coordinate, transact, and make decisions more safely and transparently across sectors such as finance, logistics, cybersecurity, energy, smart cities, and robotics.
Associate Professor Jiangshan Yu, Lecturer Liyi Zhou, Associate Professor Qiang Tang, Associate Professor Wei Bao, Associate Professor Nguyen Tran, Professor Albert Zomaya
This subtheme focuses on technologies that allow people, organisations, machines, data, products, and claims to be verified and governed across digital and physical environments. It includes digital identity, verifiable credentials, provenance, digital certification, consent, traceability, audit trails, data sovereignty, and trusted information sharing across institutional boundaries.
This research improves trust in digital interactions, organisational records, supply chains, and cross-sector data exchange. It supports applications in government, health, education, sustainability reporting, compliance, trade, and industry certification by reducing fraud, improving transparency, strengthening user control, and enabling reliable verification of identity, data, goods, and claims.
Associate Professor Jiangshan Yu, Professor Vincent Gramoli, Associate Professor Qiang Tang
This subtheme examines how decentralised technologies can be designed, governed, regulated, and adopted responsibly. It includes platform governance, digital asset regulation, technical standards, assurance, risk management, ethics, accountability, compliance, responsible innovation, and the interaction between technical systems and institutional decision-making.
This research helps governments, regulators, industry partners, and communities manage the risks and opportunities of decentralised technologies. It supports responsible adoption by aligning technical innovation with governance, standards, regulation, ethics, and public trust, ensuring decentralised systems deliver social, economic, and institutional value safely and transparently.
Associate Professor Jiangshan Yu, Professor Vincent Gramoli, Lecturer Liyi Zhou, Associate Professor Qiang Tang, Associate Professor Wei Bao, Professor Albert Zomaya
This subtheme develops decentralised infrastructure for delivering digital services with stronger and provable fairness guarantees. It includes randomness as a service, storage as a service, information retrieval as a service, privacy-preserving computation as a service, fair exchange, incentive-compatible protocols, verifiable service delivery, smart contracts, and blockchain-based enforcement. The focus is on ensuring that users, service providers, and participating parties cannot unfairly bias outcomes, selectively abort, deny service after payment, or obtain value without delivering the promised result.
This research enables digital services that are fair, auditable, and economically trustworthy without relying on a single trusted intermediary. It supports applications in Web3 services, decentralised finance, privacy-preserving data sharing, public randomness, distributed storage, verifiable computation, AI services, and digital marketplaces by providing formal fairness guarantees and practical mechanisms for accountability and enforcement.
Lecturer Sri AravindaKrishnan Thyagarajan, Professor Vincent Gramoli, Associate Professor Qiang Tang, Associate Professor Nguyen Tran
