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

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

SINGAPORE, 4 August 2022 /PRNewswire/ — The Algorand Foundationwhose mission is to grow the ecosystem to Algorandthe carbon-negative Layer 1 blockchain invented by the Turing Award winner and MIT professor Silvio Micaliannounced today the 10 winners of its Algorand Centers of Excellence (ACEs) Program with total prices 50 million dollars over five years. The program received 77 proposals with over 550 participants representing 46 countries; The winners were selected by an international panel of 27 experts from a variety of disciplines.

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

US

Australia

Italy

Germany

South Africa

Singapore

“The selection process was incredibly difficult, given how many good applications we received,” said Dr. Hugo KrawczykAlgorand Foundation’s principal researcher and head of ACE program. “However, we are delighted to see how many bright, talented people around the world are recognizing blockchain technology’s ability to fundamentally change and improve the world we live in, and we are very much looking forward to seeing the amazing work that the grant recipients do in the coming the months and years.”

These grants will fund research and education hubs (each an Algorand Center of Excellence) on university campuses around the world for several years to enable:

• Interdisciplinary research in the area of ​​blockchain and cryptocurrency
• College courses, hackathons, accelerators and student-led organizations and activities
• Development of real 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 its roots and supporting this kind of research. The academic grants go to amazing teams that will help grow the diverse and inclusive global community of blockchain researchers and educators,” said Dr. Shafi Goldwassera scientific advisor to Algorand and winner of the Turing Prize (together with Micali), the Gödel Prize and Franklin Medal.

Goldwasser, who received his Ph.D from UC Berkeley and is currently director of the university’s Simons Institute for the Theory of Computingadded, “And of course I’m 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 instant finality and almost zero transaction costs, and without a second of downtime since its publication in June 2019. Its carbon-neutral platform and unique pure proof-of-stake consensus mechanism solves 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 healthy supply economy, decentralized governance, and healthy and prosperous open source ecosystem. For more information, visit https://algorand.foundation

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

SOURCE Algorand Foundation