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VanEck Digital Assets Initiative Names Managing Director

USC Marshall has named Eric Chung, part-time professor of information technology, as the inaugural Managing Director of the VanEck Digital Assets (VEDA) Initiative.

04.03.23

VanEck Digital Assets Initiative Names Managing Director

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USC Marshall has named Eric Chung, part-time professor of information technology, as the inaugural Managing Director of the VanEck Digital Assets (VEDA) Initiative.

Chung has been part of the faculty since 2018, making significant contributions to the creation of USC’s Blockchain Minor as well as teaching courses on smart contract development, blockchain innovation, and digital entrepreneurship. Outside of USC, his industry experience as a two-time founder most notably includes being a cofounder of Abridged, the company behind Collab.Land. Collab.Land is the most widely-used non-financial blockchain product with over 8M users that introduced “token-gating” to the world, the configuration of access control based on the ownership of a digital asset.

“We are witnessing a salient shift in the way humans engage with and through the Internet - the tremendous potential for blockchain’s role in the coming Web3 era remains largely untapped,” remarked Chung. “I look forward to cultivating a strong community of students, faculty, and industry leaders through world-class experiential education and bleeding-edge research made possible with the generous support of the VanEck family.”

Chung will be joining VEDA co-directors Anthony Borquez and James Healy to make USC the premier institution for education and research around digital assets and blockchain technology.

“I look forward to cultivating a strong community of students, faculty, and industry leaders through world-class experiential education and bleeding-edge research made possible with the generous support of the VanEck family.”

— Eric Chung

Managing Director of the VanEck Digital Assets (VEDA) Initiative

“The ideal person for the Managing Director position for the Van Eck Digital Assets Initiative is not only an industry expert in the blockchain space, but also someone that has built academic programs and a vision for USC to be a global leader in Web3,” said Borquez and Healy. “We are fortunate to have found that person, Eric Chung.”

“As with major technological platform shifts, it will require conscious effort from academia, industry, and government to converge on best practices in order to cross the chasm towards mainstream adoption,” said Chung. “The VanEck Digital Assets Initiative provides USC Marshall with a strong foundation to tackle this challenge.”

Further information on the VanEck Digital Assets Initiative at USC’s Marshall School of Business can be found here.