Ripple contributes $50 million to university-led blockchain research program

Participating universities from the United States, Australia, the UK, Europe, Asia, India, South America.

Cryptocurrency company Ripple committed over $50 million to fund the collaborative University Blockchain Research Initiative (UBRI), designed to pursue academic advances and technical innovations in blockchain.

In an announcement on the company’s blog this week, Ripple revealed that there are 17 global university partners in UBRI studying blockchain, cryptocurrency and digital payments.

The universities will cooperate on blockchain research, plus create new curriculum to meet student demand.

Interest in blockchain is soaring, with a groundswell of activity taking place on the campuses of the world’s top universities. From new business use cases — such as making cross-border payments faster, lower cost and more transparent — to uses of blockchain for good, students and faculty globally are emerging as major contributors to the creation of a more robust and valuable blockchain and payments ecosystem.

Ripple details the importance of blockchain studies among university students.

Earlier this year, several leading colleges throughout the United States began to offer dedicated classes examining the increasingly popular cryptocurrency industry and the still-developing blockchain technology that supports it. Graduate-level classes are being held at Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Duke, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Maryland and more.

UBRI partners represent a cross-section of geographies and markets, as well as a blend of academic disciplines. The institutions will be able to set their research topics independently, according to Ripple.

For example, the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University will study the policy impact of cryptocurrencies and blockchain. At the University of Pennsylvania, select MBA-MS candidates will establish an annual Wharton-Engineering dual-degree program. UBRI is also funding MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab’s new FinTech initiative to research blockchain, cybersecurity and cryptocurrencies.

In Europe, Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and the University of Luxembourg will build a new blockchain research program inside their Departments of Computer Science and Engineering via UBRI funds.

Check out the full list of participating universities below:

• Australian National University College of the Law
• CITP at Princeton
• CSAIL at MIT
• Delft University of Technology (Netherlands)
• Fundação Getulio Vargas (Brazil)
• Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley
• IIT Bombay (India)
• International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (India)
• Korea University
• McCombs School of Business, UT-Austin
• The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• The University of Pennsylvania
• UCL (University College London)
• University of Luxembourg
• University of Nicosia (Cyprus)
• University of Oregon
• University of Waterloo

The study of cryptocurrencies and distributed ledger technology poses questions about the future of money, the efficiency of business administration and technology’s ability to revolutionize society, among others.

The fact that a number of high-profile schools across the country are investing time and resources into exploring the applications of digital currencies and associated technologies brings further credibility to the emerging industry. Teaching students about cryptocurrencies may also help to alleviate critics’ concerns.

You can learn all about different exchanges, understand exactly how to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, calculate your taxes, discover digital wallets to hold assets and explore a list of all the alternative coins on the market.

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