The Centre for Digital Transformation (CDT), founded in 2021, was established to help businesses understand the far-reaching organisational implications of the digital revolution. From artificial intelligence to the Internet of Things (IoT) to blockchain, the Centre’s work focuses on new and emerging digital technologies, and how they can be leveraged to meet both business and social objectives. Collaborating with leading academics across Imperial College Business School and the wider institution, the Centre engages in cross-disciplinary research on the impact that digitalisation will have on the future of work to help businesses understand how to innovate to address the challenges digital transformation presents.

Within the Centre, the Institutional Digital Assets Project is a translational initiative that seeks to connect academic theory to practical application, with a goal of shaping the practice of finance and business regarding digital assets through thought leadership and capacity building based in a leading centre of academic research.

Christopher Tucci, Professor of Digital Strategy & Innovation at Imperial College Business School and Director of the Centre for Digital Transformation, commented: “We are pleased to welcome Copper to Imperial and the CDT, and appreciate its support for helping mainstream financial services and governmental bodies to understand the implications of distributed ledger technologies, popularly known as ‘blockchain and cryptocurrencies’.”

Professor Francisco Veloso, Dean of Imperial College Business School, said: “I am delighted with this partnership between Copper and our CDT. Technology is dramatically changing the finance industry and this collaboration will help place Imperial College Business School at the leading edge of this revolution as we seek to increase our understanding of digital transformation and how it can be used to drive change in businesses and safeguard the community.”

As part of Copper’s participation in the project, Head of Research, Fadi Aboualfa will be joining as an Executive in Residence. He will be collaborating with Imperial on research exploring crypto market dynamics, digital asset economics and valuations. On being appointed to the role, he commented: “We’re thrilled to be partnering with Imperial College Business School on this exciting project. There are a lot of considerations in crypto and a lot of data points, but many look for answers in wrong places. We’ll be trying to focus in on the right metrics to be better able to make sound investment decisions at the same time as identifying the technological hurdles to adoption, to see how the crypto economy may evolve in the future.”

Copper, a London-headquartered startup founded in 2018 has raised $84.3mn in funding to date, most recently via a $25mn extension round to its Series B round which was led by Alan Howard.