Algorand Foundation announces global winners for its $50M blockchain research and education program

In the US, the Algorand Centres of Excellence (ACE) Program will fund multi-year projects at UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, University of Florida, Yale and Purdue

SINGAPORE, Aug. 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Algorand Foundation, whose mission is to grow the ecosystem of Algorand, the carbon-negative Layer 1 blockchain invented by Turing Award winner and MIT professor Silvio Micali, today announced the 10 winners of its Algorand Centres of Excellence (ACEs) Program with awards totalling $50M over five years. The program received 77 proposals with over 550 participants representing 46 countries; winners were selected by an international panel of 27 experts from a diverse set of disciplines. 

The 10 winners lead 36 sub-organizations and are represented by the following primary investigators (PIs):

US

• University of California, Berkeley - Dr. Natacha Crooks 
• Carnegie Mellon University - Dr. Nicolas Christin, Dr. Elaine Shi, Dr. Ariel Zetlin-Jones
• University of Florida - Dr. Marko Suvajdzic 
• Yale University - Dr. Charalampos (Babis) Papamanthou
• Purdue University - Dr. Vassilis Zikas

Australia

• Monash University - Dr. Joseph Liu

Italy

• Roma Tre University - Dr. Maddalena Rabitti

Germany

• Technical University of Munich - Dr. Georg Carle

South Africa

• University of Cape Town - Dr. Co-Pierre Georg

Singapore

• Nanyang Technological University, Singapore - Dr. Yonggang Wen

"The selection process was incredibly difficult, given how many excellent applications we received," said Dr. Hugo Krawczyk, Algorand Foundation's principal researcher and head of the ACE Program. "But we're delighted to see how many bright, talented people around the globe recognize the ability of blockchain technology to fundamentally change and better the world we live in, and we're very much looking forward to seeing the amazing work the grant recipients do in the coming months and years."

These grants will fund research and education hubs (each one is an Algorand Centre of Excellence) on university campuses worldwide for multiple years to enable:

• Multi-disciplinary research in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space
• College courses, hackathons, accelerators and student-led organizations and activities 
• Development of real-world solutions, applications and use cases
• Social impact and sustainability projects based on blockchain technology
• Algorand education and community expansion

"It was the cryptographic, distributed and security community that created the technology on which blockchains are based. I applaud the Algorand Foundation for going back to the roots and supporting this kind of research. The academic grants are going to stellar teams that will help grow the diverse and inclusive global community of blockchain researchers and educators,"  said Dr. Shafi Goldwasser, a scientific advisor for Algorand and winner of the Turing Award (alongside Micali), Gödel Prize and Franklin Medal.

Goldwasser, who received her Ph.D from UC Berkeley and is currently the director of the university's Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing, added, "And of course, I am proud to see my Bears among the winners!"

ALGORAND FOUNDATION
The Algorand blockchain — designed by MIT professor and Turing Award winning cryptographer Silvio Micali — is capable of delivering on the promise of a borderless global economy. It achieves transaction throughputs at the speed of traditional finance, with immediate finality and near zero transaction costs, and without a second of downtime since it went live in June 2019.Its carbon-neutral platform and unique pure proof-of-stake consensus mechanism solves for the "blockchain trilemma" by achieving both security and scalability on a decentralized protocol.

The Algorand Foundation is dedicated to helping fulfill the global promise of the Algorand blockchain by taking responsibility for its sound monetary supply economics, decentralized governance, and healthy and prosperous open-source ecosystem. For more information, visit https://algorand.foundation

MEDIA CONTACTS 
Prosek Partners, on behalf of Algorand Foundation
[email protected]

SOURCE Algorand Foundation