Dr. Ayesha Naureen

Dr. Ayesha Naureen is the co-founder and Chief Information Officer (CIO) of UrbanChain, the UK's first peer-to-peer renewable energy exchange. Of Pakistani heritage, Ayesha grew up in Pakistan where she earned a Bachelor's in Software Engineering and a Master's in Information Security from the National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) in Islamabad — one of Pakistan's most prestigious institutions. After working as a software developer and later as a university lecturer for several years, she moved to the UK in 2014 and completed her PhD in Computer Science at the University of Manchester in 2019, specialising in blockchain, AI, and cybersecurity.

Ayesha joined the UrbanChain founding team in 2017, drawn by the opportunity to apply blockchain and distributed systems research to a real-world problem of genuine social significance: making renewable energy affordable and accessible. As CIO, she leads the research, design, and development of UrbanChain's distributed energy market platform, including the P2P Exchange System that uses AI to match renewable generators with consumers on a half-hourly basis. Her expertise sits at the intersection of blockchain architecture, cryptography, cybersecurity, and computer systems — the technical foundations that underpin UrbanChain's entire marketplace.

Ayesha and co-founder Somayeh Taheri were jointly awarded the Female Founder Award at The Sunday Times 100 Tech Awards, and UrbanChain has been recognised in Deloitte's UK Technology Fast 50 (2024) and Tech Nation's Future Fifty (2025). Ayesha is also a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Limerick, continuing her research while serving as a co-founder. She represents the power of combining academic rigour with entrepreneurial ambition to drive meaningful change in the energy sector.