Dr. Gautam Srivastava

Gautam Srivastava was awarded his B.Sc. degree from Briar Cliff University in the U.S.A. in the year 2004, followed by his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Victoria in Victoria.

Title

Bitcoin, blockchain technology, decentralized, hash functions, cryp- tography

Abstract

The blockchain is the core mechanism for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Blockchain technology can be regarded as a public ledger, in which all committed transac- tions are stored in a chain of blocks. This technology has far-reaching possibilities of applications beyond finance in areas such as healthcare, voting systems, and civil document management to name just a few.

A blockchain is essentially a distributed database of records, or public ledger of all transactions or digital events that have been executed and shared among participating parties. Each transaction in the public ledger is verified by consen- sus of a majority of the participants in the system. Once entered, information can never be erased. The blockchain contains a certain and verifiable record of ev- ery single transaction ever made. Bitcoin, the decentralized peer-to-peer digital currency, is the most popular example that uses blockchain technology. The dig- ital currency bitcoin itself is highly controversial but the underlying blockchain technology has worked flawlessly and found wide range of applications in both financial and non-financial world.

In this lecture our main hypothesis is that the blockchain establishes a sys- tem of creating a distributed consensus in the digital online world. This allows participating entities to know for certain that a digital event happened by cre- ating an irrefutable record in a public ledger. It opens the door for developing a democratic open and scalable digital economy from a centralized one. There are tremendous opportunities in this disruptive technology, and the revolution in this space has just begun. This lecture will describe blockchain technology and some compelling specific applications in both financial and non-financial sectors. We will finally look at the challenges ahead and business opportunities in this fundamental technology that is all set to revolutionize our digital world.

Biography

Gautam Srivastava was awarded his B.Sc. degree from Briar Cliff University in the U.S.A. in the year 2004, followed by his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada in the years 2006 and 2012, respectively. He then taught for 3 years at the University of Victoria in the Department of Computer Science, where he was regarded as one of the top undergraduate professors in the Computer Science Course Instruction at the University. From there in the year 2014, he joined a tenure-track position at Brandon University in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada, where he currently is active in various professional and scholarly activities. He was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in January 2018. Dr. G, as he is popularly known, is active in research in the field of Cryptography, Data Mining, Security and Privacy, and Blockchain Technology. In his 5 years as a research academic, he has published a total of 60 papers in high-impact conferences in many countries and in high-status journals (SCI, SCIE) and has also delivered invited guest lectures on Big Data, Cloud Computing, Internet of Things, and Cryptography at many universities worldwide. He is an Editor of several SCI/SCIE journals. He currently has active research projects with other academics in Taiwan, Singapore, Canada, Czech Republic, Poland, and the U.S.A. He is an IEEE Senior Member and also an Associate Editor of the world-renowned IEEE Access journal.