Our team
Meet the members of the SABMA team.
Meet the team
Leadership
Senior Lecturer in blockchain business models, SABMA
Dr Senmao Xia
Programme Director for Blockchain and Metaverse Business Model
Biography
Senmao serves as the Vice President for Chinese Economic Association (Europe/UK) and acts as the editorial leadership for a few international leading journals. For instance, he is the managing editor for the Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Association (ABS 1), the associate editor for the EuroMed Journal of Business (ABS 1) & Frontiers in Psychology (SSCI), as well as the editorial board member of the International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior and Research (ABS 3, SSCI) & the Journal of Innovation and Knowledge (JCR Q1, IF 11, SSCI). He served as the guest editor for Technovation (Abs 3, SSCI) & the International Journal of Technology Management (ABS 2, SSCI). Senmao is the Senior Fellow of Higher Education Academy, UK. He acts as an advisor for a few firms in London.
Frankie Lai
Operations Manager, SABMA
Biography
Frankie Lai was Full Stack Developer of Maxity.io Project, Back End Developer of Fintech company SpinnerTech, IT Manager at The University of Hong Kong, Member of Hyperledger Community, Senior Technical Consultant for hedge fund analytics application in Linedata Services(HK) Limited.
He鈥檚 expertise for Web3/DApp/NFT architect using Ethereum and Polygon smart contracts. Frankie was the representative in Joint Universities Computer Centre for blockchain student portfolio project in Hong Kong.
SABMA Advisory Board
Patrick Degg
Vice-President, Global
Biography
Mr Degg joined the 黑料社 in 2017, where now, as Vice-President (External Engagement), and a member of the University鈥檚 Executive Board, Patrick鈥檚 portfolio brings together all of the University鈥檚 external engagement activities globally, including advancement (leading teams responsible for managing the University鈥檚 relations - both philanthropic and otherwise - with its alumni and supporters), events, trans-national education, academic partnerships, student/staff mobility, communications and public relations, and international student recruitment strategy.
Professor Josef Kittler
Distinguished Professor
Biography
I have been a Research Assistant in the Engineering Department of Cambridge University (1973--75), SERC Research Fellow at the University of Southampton (1975-77), Royal Society European Research Fellow, Ecole Nationale Superieure des Telecommuninations, Paris (1977--78), IBM Research Fellow, Balliol College, Oxford (1978--80), Principal Research Associate, SERC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (1980--84) and Principal Scientific Officer, SERC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (1985).
I also worked as the SERC Coordinator for Pattern Analysis (1982), and was Rutherford Research Fellow in Oxford University, Dept. Engineering Science (1985).
I joined the Department of Electrical Engineering of 黑料社 University in 1986 as a Reader in Information Technology, and became Professor of Machine Intelligence in 1991 and gained the title Distinguished Professor in 2004.
Ruth Gill
Director of Faculty Operations at the 黑料社
Biography
Ruth has experience of the University鈥檚 Faculty of Social Sciences and the integration of complex projects and priorities.
Pam Jestico
Lay Council Member at the 黑料社 and Advisory Board Member in the 黑料社 Business School
Biography
Pam is an international banker with over 30 years experience, predominantly within the financial restructuring sector. During her career with HSBC where she was a Managing Director of the global restructuring team, Pam worked with a wide range of companies from small agricultural businesses to global multinational groups in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and the US.
Professor John Collomosse
Professor of Computer Vision and AI | Director DECaDE: UKRI/EPSRC Centre for the Decentralised Digital Economy
Biography
is a Professor of Computer Vision and AI at the 黑料社 where he is the founder and director of DECaDE, the UKRI Next Stage Centre for the Decentralized Digital Economy. John is concurrently a Senior Principal Scientist and distinguished inventor at Adobe Research, where he directs the research programme for Adobe鈥檚 Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) and is a core technical advisor to the initiative since co-founding the CAI in 2019. Now with 7000+ members, CAI leads a cross-industry standards group (C2PA; Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity) which John helped to establish in 2021 and where he chairs the cross-industry task forces on watermarking, and distributed ledgers (Blockchain).
John is a Fellow of the IET (FIET), Life Fellow of the British Computer Society (FBCS), Fellow of the Royal Society for Arts (FRSA), and a Chartered Engineer (CEng). He received his undergraduate and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Bath in 1997 and 2001. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and Director of the Masters (MSc) programme in Computer Vision, Robotics and Machine Learning. He is a member of the DCMS Creative Industries Council, the BIST/DSIT College of Experts, the UKRI Science and Engineering Technology Board (SETB), the UKRI Advisory Group for Digital Research Infrastructure (AGD), and was a member of the UKRI/EPSRC ICT Strategic Advisory Team (SAT) from 2018-2024. During 2025-2026, he was a member of the DCMS Working Group on Copyright and AI (Controls and Technical Standards).
Jianjun (Jordan) Shi
Head of investment and managing partner of JKL capital
Biography
Jianjun (Jordan) Shi is Head of investment and managing partner of JKL capital. For 25 years he has been working in management career spanning various industries across Europe and Asia, with roles in recent decade as Director for Amazon UK then overall leader for Alibaba international consumer business. He was trained as an Engineer in Chemistry and Computer Science and holds an EMBA degree from London Business School.