Bryan Mercurio is the Simon F.S. Li Professor of Law at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and RGC Senior Research Fellow. Professor Mercurio specialises in international economic law (IEL), with particular expertise in the intersection between trade law and intellectual property rights, free trade agreements, trade in services, dispute settlement and increasingly international investment law. Professor Mercurio is co-author of one of the most widely used textbooks on WTO law (Hart Publishing, 2018, 3rd ed) and co-editor of the leading collection on bilateral and regional trade agreements (Cambridge University Press, 2nd ed, 2016). His most recent monographs respectively explore the international and domestic framework for pharmaceutical patent law and policy (Cambridge University Press, 2018), policy considerations underlying and shaping government policies on cross-border data flows (Anthem Press, 2022) and the legality of capital controls under the various strands of IEL (Cambridge University Press, 2023). Professor Mercurio has recently been awarded Hong Kong Research Grants Council (RGC) Senior Research Fellowship in the amount of HK$7,798,380 for a five-year interdisciplinary project entitled, ‘Access to Vaccines in a Post-COVID-19 World: Sustainable Legal and Policy Options’.

Ms. Boltenko is a partner at Fangda Partners in Hong Kong. She is an investment and trade lawyer with over fifteen years’ experience in public international law and investor-State dispute resolution. She has acted as counsel in investor-State disputes under the auspices of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, the International Chamber of Commerce, and the London Court of International Arbitration, as well as in commercial disputes in a wide array of industries, including oil and gas, infrastructure, construction, telecommunications, and pharmaceuticals across Asia and beyond. Ms. Boltenko is an adjunct associate professor and a deputy executive director of LL.M. in Arbitration and Dispute Resolution at The University of Hong Kong, where she teaches arbitration and investment law. She is admitted to the roll of solicitors in Hong Kong and she is qualified to practise law in the Russian Federation. Ms. Boltenko is listed as an arbitrator with the CIETAC, the Singapore International Arbitration Centre, the Asian International Arbitration Centre, the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, and with a number of other regional and Central Asian institutions, where is developing an active arbitrator practice.

Douglas W. Arner is the Kerry Holdings Professor in Law and RGC Senior Research Fellow in Digital Finance and Sustainable Development at the University of Hong Kong, where he is also a Senior Fellow of the Asia Global Institute, Associate Director of the HKU-Standard Chartered Foundation FinTech Academy and a Member of the Management Committee of the Techno-Entrepreneurship Core as well as principal of the Reg/Tech Lab and Faculty Director of the Law, Innovation, Technology and Entrepreurship Programme (LITE). He is a non-executive director of NASDAQ and Euronext listed early-stage biotechnology development firm Aptorum Group, a PRIME Finance Expert, an Advisory Board Member of the Global Impact FinTech (GIFT) Forum, SuperCharger Ventures, Policy 4.0, the International RegTech Association, the Alliance for Innovative Regulation and the Centre for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship (CFTE), and co-founder and an executive board member of the Asia Pacific Structured Finance Association. He leads the largest FinTech online course on edX, now with over 125,000 participants drawn from (almost) every country in the world. Douglas focuses on the interlinkages between finance, technology and broader sustainable development. He has published twenty books and more than 200 articles, chapters and reports on finance, technology, regulation and development, including most recently FinTech: Finance, Technology, Regulation (Cambridge 2023 forthcoming, with Ross Buckley and Dirk Zetzsche).