Algorand Foundation commits $50 million to global blockchain research
The Algorand Foundation—an arm of the Boston-based blockchain developer Algorand, founded by Massachusetts Institute of Technology cryptography pioneer and Turing Award winner Silvio Micali—has announced the 10 winning universities for its Algorand Centres of Excellence competition.
The recipient universities will share grants totaling $50 million over five years. The foundation, a nonprofit incorporated in Singapore, works to expand global acceptance of the open-source Algorand blockchain—based on the low power consumption, “pure proof-of-stake” protocol—with the goal of eliminating environmental impact and creating the first carbon-neutral blockchain network.
The recipient universities and principal researchers include University of California, Berkeley (Natacha Crooks), Carnegie Mellon University (Nicolas Christin, Elaine Shi, and Ariel Zetlin-Jones) University of Florida (Marko Suvajdzic), Yale University (Charalampos Papamanthou), Purdue University (Vassilis Zikas), Monash University (Australia—Joseph Liu), Roma Tre University (Italy—Maddalena Rabitti), Technical University of Munich (Germany—Georg Carle), University of Cape Town (South Africa—Co-Pierre Georg), and Nanyang Technological University (Singapore—Yonggang Wen).
The grants will fund research and education hubs at each university to enable multi-disciplinary research in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space, the development of real-world solutions, applications, and use cases as well as social impact and sustainability projects based on blockchain technology. In addition, the grants will be used to develop college courses, hackathons, and accelerators and support student-led organizations and activities related to blockchain development.
“I applaud the Algorand Foundation for…supporting this kind of research,” said Shafi Goldwasser, a scientific advisor for Algorand, who shared the Turing Award with Micali in 2012. “The academic grants are going to stellar teams that will help grow the diverse and inclusive global community of blockchain researchers and educators."
(Photo credit: GettyImages/Cemile Bingol)
