The blockchain landscape looks very different today than it did even a few years ago. What was once a technology defined largely by speculation and volatility has evolved into a serious infrastructure layer underpinning financial markets, creative industries, and emerging digital economies. Stablecoins are processing trillions of dollars in transactions. Smart contracts are reshaping how creators, businesses, and consumers interact. And the convergence of blockchain with artificial intelligence is opening research questions that didn’t exist a decade ago.
It is into this moment that USC Marshall’s VanEck Digital Assets Initiative (VEDA) welcomes Lan Luo, the Neely Chair in American Enterprise and professor of marketing at USC Marshall, as its new director, effective July 1, 2026. A scholar whose research sits at the intersection of innovation, technology adoption, and digital markets, Luo brings both academic depth and real-world industry experience to a role that has taken on new importance.
“The field has moved remarkably fast,” said Luo. “What excites me about this moment is that the foundational questions — how blockchain reshapes markets, how decentralized systems change the relationship between creators and consumers, how businesses adapt to technologies that disrupt their core assumptions — are exactly the kinds of questions that rigorous academic research is well positioned to answer.”
Luo’s scholarship reflects that orientation. Her recent paper “Blockchain Technology for Creative Industries: Current State and Research Opportunities,” published in the International Journal of Research in Marketing, examines how blockchain-based NFTs and smart contracts are restructuring the relationship between creators and consumers — work that speaks directly to the industries she engaged with during her time leading the Amazon Studios Science team. An award-winning educator and active PhD mentor, she has also held editorial and leadership roles across several leading academic journals. That combination of scholarly rigor, industry experience, and institutional engagement aligns closely with VEDA’s core strategy of bridging rigorous academic research with real-world industry engagement.
Established through a visionary gift from USC Marshall alumna Cynthia van Eck '86 and Jan van Eck, the VanEck Digital Assets Initiative (VEDA) advances research, education, and industry engagement in digital assets and blockchain. As director, Luo will guide the initiative with a focus on three defining priorities: industry practitioner engagement, academic thought leadership, and global outreach. On the industry side, VEDA will continue to bring leading digital asset practitioners directly into the USC ecosystem through conferences, workshops, and mentorship. Academically, Luo aims to deepen the initiative’s research footprint across blockchain systems, tokenized finance, decentralized infrastructure, and digital markets. And globally, she intends to expand VEDA’s presence across major innovation hubs — including Washington D.C. and Asia — to cement USC’s reputation as one of the world’s most recognized university programs at the intersection of higher education and digital assets.
