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Julio heads R&D in Santander's Innovation Division. He executes major innovation projects globally. He also leads new business incubation and venture creation efforts, and actively contributing to Santander's M&A and Venture Capital activity in Fintech.

He leads Santander's activities around Blockchain, distributed ledgers and smart contracts, and has founded Santander's crypto Lab, a collaborative space to bring Blockchain technology to the market both applying it within Santander Group as well as in partnership with other leading banks and specialized technology players.

He is the chairman of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, the chairman of Spain’s Alastria network, a member of the board of the Wall Street Blockchain Alliance, and a senior advisor of the Global Payments Steering Group.

Julio’s career started out as chip designer, focusing on high performance analogue (full custom) and digital systems-on-chip as well as complex chip design platforms that led to more than 30 publications in international refereed forums.

He then worked for McKinsey & Co, where he specialized in Banking serving many of the top financial institutions in Spain, Europe and LatAm. In 2007 he joined Santander, where he has played corporate leadership roles in Investment Banking, Consumer Finance, and IT & Operations, and has participated in many of Santander’s acquisition processes during the last years.

Julio is a Telecommunication Engineer (UPM-Spain), PhD in Computer Science (UAM-Spain), and MsC in Management of Technology (MIT-Sloan). He is also a part-time entrepreneur working on capital markets technology startups, focusing on low latency algorithmic trading in Fx markets.