Speaker Biographies – Singapore, Spring 2023

Bishop Brock, Head of Research, Securities Technology Analysis Center.
Bishop ensures that STAC’s research, benchmark standards, and software tools meet the needs of STAC’s community. He has over 30 years of experience, including research roles at State Street, IBM Research, and Computational Logic, Inc. in diverse areas including machine learning, automated reasoning, formal verification, embedded systems, and computer energy management. Before joining STAC, he contributed to new STAC benchmarks and developed STAC Benchmark implementations on multiple platforms. Bishop is an IBM Master Inventor, Senior Member of the IEEE, has passed the CFA Exam Level III, and holds a BS in Chemistry and BA and MS in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin.

Sachar de Vries, Chief Technology Officer, Grasshopper Asia.
Sachar has spent a decade building the technological foundations of Grasshopper. As the first IT hire, Sachar was pivotal in the firm’s transformation from first time electronic traders to regional tech powerhouse. Now, as Chief Technical Officer, Sachar leads technology strategy and helps the trading teams leverage Grasshopper’s proprietary trading platform. Born and raised in the Netherlands, Sachar previously held roles at Essent, Kabelcom, the second largest internet provider in the Netherlands. He moved to Singapore in 2008, and can be found travelling the region in search of the best places to kitesurf and hit waves.


Alexandre has over 12 years of experience in electronics and trading infrastructure. He recently joined the low latency data and feed handler business unit of LSEG after their acquisition of May Street in 2022. Prior to LSEG, Alexandre worked in AMD and Enyx, as the Director of APAC. Alexandre has a master in FPGA/Microelectronics, and recently reach the rank of Kaggle competition master.

Aaron Foo, CEO, FMAD Engineering.
FPGA Engineer, Software Engineer & Entrepreneur, Aaron Foo leads FMADIO, a company with a packet capture appliance which does so much more than just recording data. In a previous life Aaron worked on FPGA pre-trade risk solutions. In a previous, previous life he was a key engineer for the Playstation console. In a previous, previous, previous life he squeezed the maximum performance from GPUs when they first arrived in the form of Nvidia RIVA128 (1997). He also collects cacti.

Seth Friedman, CEO, Liquid-Markets-Solutions.
As CEO of LMS, Seth is responsible for product vision. He has been an active leader at the forefront of electronic trading for over 23 years, with deep sales-trading, technology, and consulting experience. His history of technology vision includes the invention of a multi-patented FPGA order processing technology proven in the field since 2010. Seth headed Program Trading at Morgan Stanley Japan before establishing the Electronic Trading Services business, which he expanded throughout Asia. At Nomura, Seth established the Quantitative Prime Services business, played a key role in the post-acquisition integration of Lehman Brothers, and was responsible for Electronic Product Management across Asia.

Tinku Gupta, Chief Technology Officer, SGX Group.
Ms. Tinku Gupta is the Chief Technology Officer and a member of the Executive Management Committee in SGX Group. She is responsible for the overall planning, development and implementation of the company’s technology-related strategies and initiatives, and Information Security and Technology Operations functions. In a career spanning over 26 years in Singapore Exchange, Tinku has led both business and technology units. She has led the implementation of many key business and technology initiatives that have helped shape SGX Group into a leading international multi-asset exchange. A passionate and articulate leader, Tinku is focused on delivering customer value while maintaining a strong culture of accountability and discipline. She continues to be a role model for women in technology and is active in diversity and community programs. She was awarded a place on The World Federation of Exchanges, Women Leaders List for 2021 as one of the talented and gifted women leaders in the Exchange industry through a competitive selection process by distinguished judges. Tinku holds a Masters’ degree in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering with First Class Honours.

Nicolas Karonis, Director Business Development APAC, NovaSparks.
For the past three years, Nicolas has been expanding the NovaSparks market data solution business in Asia. He has spent the last 20 years as an eTrading technologist in Asia with a special focus on FPGAs and their use for Financial markets. He led for 10 years the Asian technology for SunGard and has held various senior positions on the Sell-Side.

Louis Liu, CEO, Shengli Technologies.
Louis is a serial entrepreneur that has founded multiple successful technology companies. At Shengli, he led an engineering team to build the first pure FPGA hardware-based trading systemfor China’s financial markets. Prior to Shengli, Louis was co-founder and co-CEO of Sonic Trading in New York, a pioneering trading technology firm. Louis designed Sonic’s core system from scratch and evolved it from a professional trading system to an institutional platform. After Sonic’s acquisition by Bank of New York,Louis served as Managing Director responsible for equity trading systems. Louis received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Columbia University in operation research.

Peter Nabicht, President, Securities Technology Analysis Center.
Peter has spent nearly 20 years driving change at the intersection of technology and complex business problems. At STAC, Peter's mission is to leverage this experience to guide the continued rapid growth of the STAC community. His key roles prior to STAC include: CTO of Allston Trading, developing and supporting multi-asset, low latency trading systems; Co-founder of 12Sided Technology, which developed high-throughput network data capture and analytics; and Head of Electronic Markets Strategy and Development at Dealerweb. Peter has a BA in English and a MS in Computer Science from Loyola University Chicago.

Sven Oehme, Chief Technology Officer, DDN.
Sven, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) drives innovation across current and future products at DDN. Before joining DDN, he had a 25-year career at IBM with his last position being Senior Technical Staff Member and Chief Research Strategist for Elastic Storage. He led the team driving performance improvements on IBM’s Spectrum Scale product (aka General Parallel File System or GPFS), a high-performance clustered file system used in large commercial computers and supercomputers. He was responsible for metadata, streaming I/O, and specific analytics optimizations. Sven is a recognized expert on advanced file systems and holds multiple patents on the subject.

Miguel Ortega, Head of Market Data, Deutsche Bank Securities Tokyo.
Since 2008, Miguel has been responsible for the design, implementation, and support of Deutsche Bank's market data infrastructure and market data commercial management in Asia. Miguel started his career at Reuters in Mexico in 1995 in charge of technical operations for the country. He transferred to Reuters New York in 1999 as a senior systems engineer in charge of Reuters and TIBCO product integration. From 2002 he worked for Barclays Capital in New York in charge of all market data infrastructure and distribution platforms for the region. In 2007 he was a managing consultant with STAC.

Alastair Richardson, Strategic Business Development Director, Data Center and Communications Group, AMD.
Alastair’s has over 18 years of experience in the global fintech markets. A unique front to back perspective having had roles in trading, product, sales and technology roles at JP Morgan, Credit Suisse, Barclays as well as several Fintech start-ups including Fixnetix and Metamako. Alastair now runs Global Business Development for Financial Technology at AMD.

Vahan Sardaryan, Co-Founder and CEO, LDA Technologies.
Vahan is a Co-Founder and the CEO at LDA Technologies, a known provider of leading high-performance FPGA-based networking products. Vahan’s experience in software design goes back 20 years and encompasses various fields such as high-performance networking, information security, realtime systems and such. He has been involved in electronic trading industry for over 12 years, 8 years of which was dedicated to HFT companies’ needs. Vahan holds a PhD degree equivalent in Applied Mathematics and is an avid chess player.

Baranidharan Sivapatham, APAC Lead for Ultra Low Latency FPGA Platforms, Barclays.
Barani has 17 years of experience designing ASICs and FPGAs for the consumer, defense, and fintech industries. Currently, he is Barclays' APAC Lead for Ultra Low Latency FPGA Platform, where he has spent 6 years building out the Direct Market Access Platforms. Barani is also a STAC FPGA Special Interest Group member and mentors university students in Singapore, guiding them as they become industry-ready.

Dr. David Snowdon, Director of Engineering, Arista Networks.
David is currently Director of Engineering at Arista Networks. He was co-founder and CTO at Metamako, which was acquired by Arista in 2018. Prior to founding Metamako, David gained a wealth of experience working in and for electronic trading firms, optimising their network structures, network performance, and building performance hardware, gateware and software. He has a PhD in Operating Systems from the University of NSW, Australia, looking at the effect of frequency scaling on power and energy usage. Outside of work, David spends time designing, building and racing high-performance solar powered cars in international events and formerly held the Guinness record for the world’s fastest solar powered vehicle.

Diana Stanescu, Director Finance and Capital Markets, Keysight Technologies, Inc.
Based in London, Diana has over 15 years of experience in network testing and monitoring. Starting her career as a QA engineer with a background in electronics and telecommunications, she has progressed to managing Keysight Professional service teams across EMEA, but also worked for a major bank in UK delivering complex projects around cyber security and fraud. Diana is a member of Keysight's specialized team that creates tailored solutions for exchanges, investment banks, and the wider finance industry. Her outside work interests include day trading, as well as running where she is training to become a running coach.

Kim Kuen Tang, Solution Architect, KX.
Kim is a Solution Architect at KX with over 15 years of industry experience, including several years in numerous Tier 1 Investment Banks and Hedge Funds in Frankfurt, London and Hong Kong. Kim specializes on the kdb+ tick-database and algorithmic-trading systems related to both the Equity and FX markets and holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from The University of Cologne.

Dave Weber, Director, Global FSI CTO, Lenovo.
Leads Lenovo's global financial services industry technology initiatives. Dave is focused on low latency, high performance and emerging technologies, as well as on-prem/hybrid cloud, AI/ML, and automation initiatives. He works with financial markets clients to provide advanced solutions, and with partners to build out the ecosystem, as well as with Lenovo Research and Development to influence future products and drive innovation. Dave also leads the Lenovo relationship with STAC®. Dave is based in New York City.

Chiun Chiek Wong, Director Bursa Intelligence, Bursa Malaysia.
CC is the Director of Bursa Intelligence, the function of the Malaysia Exchange that oversees the digital, data, and connectivity solutions business, and also leads the commercial strategy to facilitate the transition to sustainability of the wider ecosystem. As the Head of Bursa Intelligence, CC manages Information Services, Index & Sustainable Business, and Enterprise Data Transformation covering data governance, acquisition, and analytics. He also oversees the technological architecture and go-to-market of new digital ventures. Before joining Bursa, CC was the Chief Financial Officer and Chief Strategy Officer cum Software Sales and Cloud Dealmaker for IBM Malaysia and was the Director of three business entities.

Ng Kin Yee, Head of the Market Data and Connectivity, SGX.
Ng Kin Yee is Head of the Market Data and Connectivity business, which offers market data distribution, connectivity, and co-location services for SGX Equities and Derivatives markets. Previously he headed the Project Management Office, and as head of Trading and Clearing, he played a key role in transforming the market infrastructure to support algorithmic trading. Before SGX Group, Kin Yee was the Public Sector Director at Microsoft Singapore and co-founder and president of a technology start-up. As deputy director of the former National Computer Board (NCB) of Singapore, he ran an initiative introducing the first nationwide high-speed broadband network. He holds a Bachelor and Master of Science in Engineering, majoring in Computer Engineering, from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he studied on a scholarship from the NCB.