Cross-border blockchain payments company Ripple, today announced the University Blockchain Research Initiative (UBRI), a collaboration with top universities around the world to support and accelerate academic research, technical development and innovation in blockchain, cryptocurrency, and digital payments.
Ripple said they have committed over $50 million in funding, subject matter expertise, and technical resources to UBRI’s first wave of university partners —17 prestigious institutions around the world.
These schools will determine their own research topics and priority areas of focus, while also partnering with Ripple to:
- Collaborate on research and technology development that will stimulate widespread understanding and innovation in blockchain.
- Create new curriculum to meet high student demand for learning about blockchain, cryptocurrency, and other FinTech topics.
- Stimulate ideas and dialog among students, faculty, technologists and business leaders on topics of shared interest.
The initial UBRI partners represent a broad cross-section of geographies and markets, as well as a rich blend of academic disciplines.
For example, as the regulatory conversation continues to evolve in the public sector, the Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) at Princeton University is creating a UBRI program that will study the policy impact of cryptocurrencies and blockchain in the U.S. and around the world.
At The University of Pennsylvania, UBRI is supporting select MBA-MS candidates each year in a newly established Wharton-Engineering dual-degree program. This funding aims to prioritize students working on blockchain or cryptocurrency.
As part of UBRI, Ripple is also participating in MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab’s new FinTech initiative made up of a nearly a dozen companies across the financial services industry to work with groups of CSAIL’s 116+ researchers on topics like blockchain, cryptocurrencies, cybersecurity and global payments.
In Europe, the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and the University of Luxembourg are building a new blockchain research program inside their Departments of Computer Science and Engineering with the help of UBRI.
UBRI’s complete list of partners:
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
International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIIT-H)
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 Ripple team said:
“As the traditional backbone of innovation, universities uniquely offer an independence and rigor that the private sector cannot. They also are responsible for training the workforce of the future, helping to address the demand for technological solutions and talent to solve the world’s hardest financial problems. Now is the perfect time to support research and study in blockchain, cryptocurrency and digital payments at universities around the world.”