Allan Lane, PhD, Founding Partner

Allan is both a founding partner of Algo-Chain and Twenty20 Investments. Prior to this Allan spearheaded BlackRock’s iShares’ investment research initiative in Europe, working with a number of clients in the portfolio solutions space. Previously he headed up the ETF Product R&D team.

Before joining iShares in 2008, Allan had previously spent 3 years within the Active Fixed Income business at Barclays Global Investors, where he was responsible for building out the investment platform, focusing on a range of trading strategies in the rates and credit arena. Allan has also held a number of senior roles in the investment banking industry, including a period at RBS where he was The Global Head of Quantitative Research, responsible for the models used to value the structured notes product range used by the bank’s equity, rates, credit and fx business lines. In his rookie years in the early 1990s, he learnt the craft of stochastic calculus as a derivatives specialist at Banque Paribas, before being recruited to head up JP Morgan’s Equity Derivatives Models team.

Allan studied Mathematics at Oxford University and Cambridge University before subsequently gaining his PhD in Theoretical Physics at The University of Washington in the US. With his close ties to The Pacific Northwest in the USA, Allan has served on the Board of Regents at the Honors College at Oregon State University, where he is now an Emeritus Member

Irene Bauer, PhD, Founding Partner

Irene is a founding partner of both Algo-Chain Twenty20 Investments and is a leading specialist in innovative portfolio construction models which control target risk while optimising the portfolio's returns. Previously, Irene has been at iShares, BlackRock, providing portfolio solutions for their Client Group, along with insights gained from a rigorous ETF investment research process. Prior to that, Irene gained experience across all aspects of ETFs while designing and researching new ETF products at iShares, covering the fixed income, equities, commodities & alternatives asset classes.

In her time at Barclays Global Investors Irene worked within the asset allocation team in the Active Fixed Income business, where she applied her expertise to the scientific investment approach of BGI. Her career in the financial services industry started at ABN Amro where she was responsible for the modelling of structured products, specializing in mortgage backed securities.

Irene has a degree in mathematics from the University of Augsburg, Germany, completing her doctorate thesis in numerical mathematics at the University of Heidelberg. After obtaining her PhD, Irene spent a number of years focusing on the commercial development of statistical models and optimisation tools.

Laurie Jaques, Fund Sales Distribution Advisor

Laurie is one of those rare individuals in the Fund Management industry whose expertise truly extends across Asset Management, Institutional and Retail Platforms, Securities, Sales Management, ETFs, and Pension Funds. With a career in excess of 30 years, Laurie has been participating in the platform revolution from the very start and right up until the present day bringing a wealth of experience that is mission critical as Algo-Chain looks to successfully navigate the FinTech landscape over the next 5 years.

Joining Baring Asset Management in the 1980s, Laurie went on to become a Director in Third-Party Sales and subsequently played significant roles at a number of the Europe’s top platform providers. These include Director of Sales at Cofunds, Head of Structured Product Sales at Skandia & Head of Sales Development UK & Ireland at Allfunds.

In addition, Laurie oversaw Sales for Henderson Global Investors’ UK Wholesale business, which combined with his experience from FNZ, Embark Group, Tavira Securities and Fundment makes his contribution to the advisory board invaluable.

Igor Sydorenko, PhD, AI Integration Advisor

Igor is an entrepreneur with a passion for artificial intelligence, investment management and AI integration to businesses and is the CEO & Co-Founder at Neurons Lab, a group of scientists, engineers, and developers who are passionate to revolutionize the future of businesses with AI and machine learning technologies.

In this fast-moving field of next generation solutions, Igor has more than 5 years of demonstrated experience working in investment management and IT industries where he managed teams of researchers, developers, data scientists, and engineers while building out a number of different products and solutions.

Having started his career providing investment advice while working for one of the Eastern Block’s largest brokers, Finam, Igor subsequently went on to work in a number of trading/investment roles and currently provides portfolio management expertise for a range of vested individuals and proprietary trading firms who operate at the NYSE.

Igor has a Bachelor’s degree in Finance from the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, a Master’s degree from Kyiv National Economic University and was awarded a PhD from Sumy State University both in the area of Banking, Corporate, Finance & Securities Law.

Alexandr Honchar, AI & Machine Learning Advisor

Alex is an AI practitioner and entrepreneur, made in Ukraine, living in Italy, working worldwide, providing a wealth of hands on experience in the field of AI & machine learning. As a Co-Founder and Chief AI Officer of Neurons Lab, his personal focus is in the areas of FinTech and Healthcare where he has applied his prowess in mathematical modelling for the last seven years.

As an active researcher and developer of quantitative investment management strategies, on the one hand, and doing his bit in healthcare by helping fighting cardiovascular diseases on the other, Alex’s multi-discipline experience in the application of machine learning helps is invaluable as a number of industries retool in the wake of the Blockchain revolution.

His career includes time as a Java developer for an online gaming platform, being a remote machine learning engineer at Mlvch (Russian Federation) and Inma AI (USA), co-founding HPA, High Performance Analytics (Italy) and being a Partner & AI Solutions Architect at Mawi Solutions (Ukraine).

Alex has a Bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics from the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute and a Master's degree in Mathematics from the University of Verona, Italy and is a regular speaker at conferences across Europe, teaches AI courses in several universities, and writes a popular blog on Medium.

James Shanks, Capital Markets Advisor

James Shanks is a markets advisor to Algo-Chain providing expertise on trading ETFs, single stocks & futures.

With over twenty-five years’ experience in Capital Markets, James brings a wealth of experience from the institutional equities trading arena and a deep understanding of trading and ETF execution.

Recently James has set up Mandria, a Wealth Manager offering investment solutions to the intermediary space, and oversees the ETF brokerage division at Tavira Securities - a global financial services firm offering brokerage, asset management and wealth management services.

A career that includes working for some of the biggest names in the financial services industry including Schröders Italia, HSBC, ADIA and Sanford Bernstein, James brings a broad understanding of the different needs across different client segments. This includes the private client space that Bernstein coveted, the high standards that comes with the competitive world of the Sovereign Wealth Fund ADIA and from the vantage point of Milan, Italy, working at Schröders, an excellent understanding of Europe's Wealth Management industry.

John Mosquera, Digital Currency Advisor

John is an energetic distributed technology consultant and early blockchain technologist. Having participated in a number of cryptocurrency projects and ICOs, he covers both public and private blockchains. Throughout his career he lead a number of technology projects, augmenting user efficiency in transactional and ledger based systems.

With strong knowledge of indices, in 2016 he created a cryptocurrency index that he has maintined since then.

John has wide ranging business and technical knowledge in the global financial and investment sectors, providing experience across a multitude of collective investment vehicles from UCITs, Hedge Funds. During his career, John has work at UBP, been a member of the iShares / Blackrock ETF Capital Markets team and has worked with Insurance products while at Aviva Investors.

John has an MSc in International Securities and Investment Banking from the ICMA Centre. He also has the IMC certificate in Securities and Regulations.

Chaiyakorn Yingsaeree, PhD, Senior Advisor - Asia

Chai has over ten years experience in financial trading industry and is a co-founder of Think Algo, a Financial Technology Research and Development company focusing on developing Artificial Intelligence (AI) trading and Risk management systems. Receiving his PhD in Computer Science from University College London (UCL), focusing on computational finance and algorithmic trading.

Prior to his current role, he worked as a quantitative researcher at Citadel Investment Group in New York responsible for developing price prediction algorithms for high frequency Rates market making and market-making strategies in US OTC securities market.

Apart from his technical background, Chaiyakorn is also a motivational speaker and a serial entrepreneur. During the last three years, he co-founded several startups including Code of Success and JH Global Partners. In 2013, his team participated in the AIS Startup 2013 competition and was selected as the top five finalists. Currently, he is on a mission to empower young people to change their mindset and take action so that they can make a bigger impact on the world.

Mike Kleyn, PhD, Senior Data Scientist

Michael Kleyn is a Data Scientist for Algo-Chain, providing expertise in the processing, manipulation, and analysis of quantitative data for driving and managing investment portfolios.

With over twenty years’ experience in Capital Markets, he brings know-how across several asset classes for the design of algorithms associated with systematic investment.

His career in finance began in Bank Treasury - measuring and monitoring counterparty credit exposure (RBS/AbnAmro). As the industry evolved to become more and more reliant on data and analytics for portfolio management, he moved to research and development of systematic investing on the buy side for large Asset Managers - in Corporate Credit & Credit Derivatives (Barclays, BlackRock) - and in Sovereign Bonds and Global Equities (Schroders).

Mike studied Engineering and Computing at Imperial College and completed a Ph.D. in Computing Science (Graph Languages) at the University of Texas at Austin.