Abstract
In the era of big data, more and more companies have become digitized. Further, under globalization initiatives such as the One-Belt One Road effort, business processes are being automated nowadays cross companies, leading to cross-boundary data flow. However, conventional information technologies are based on corporate silos that are secured with firewalls, passwords, and intrusion detection techniques. Unfortunately, those corporate silos make it difficult to process cross-boundary transactions that require efficient dataflow among business partners. In this talk, the speaker will advocate the research and development of an emerging technology called blockchain as a trust platform for cross-boundary dataflow. In particular, the talk will start with an overview of blockchain (including smart contract) as a novel approach to computational intelligence, followed by its application in supply chain finance and healthcare.

Biography
J. Leon Zhao (Ph.D. in Business Administration, University of California at Berkeley, 1992) is Chair Professor in Information Systems, City University of Hong Kong. He was Interim Head and Eller Professor in Management Information Systems, University of Arizona before joining City University of Hong Kong in 2009 as Head of Information Systems. His research is on information technology and management, with focus on collaboration and workflow technologies and business information services. He is director of Center on Global Internet Finance and Lab on Enterprise Process Innovation and Computing funded by NSF, RGC, SAP, and IBM among other sponsors. He was awarded an IBM Faculty Award in 2005 and Chang Jiang Scholar Chair Professorship at Tsinghua University in 2009.

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