About Loi Luu:
Loi is a PhD student in the Department of Computer Science at National University of Singapore. He is working with Prateek Saxena as his research advisor. Loi's research topics of interest are Cryptocurrency, Applied Cryptography and Distributed Consensus Algorithms.
Loi and his team have just launched the SmartPool project recently, which builds decentralized mining pools for existing cryptocurrencies using Ethereum smart contracts.
Loi Luu's Home Page - NUS Computing: http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~loiluu/
Related: Oyente an Analysis Tool for Smart Contracts (Making Smart Contracts Smarter) - Loi Luu (video) https://steemit.com/ethereum/@btc-central/oyente-an-analysis-tool-for-smart-contracts-making-smart-contracts-smarter-loi-luu
very technical..that said, Devcon attracts a lot of folks doing cutting edge projects. academics & industry collaborations are highly encouraged in this area. strongest trend in applied cryptography we've seen..