10 Leading Academics Join Forces to Research and Bring Blockchain Benefits to Society and Business

An all-star team of academic blockchain scholars across North America and Europe is thrilled to announce the formation of a multi-national research organization, Insolar Research, which is poised to finally bring the many promises of blockchain science to real-world enterprise application.

Insolar Research is a major subsidiary of Insolar and is comprised of 10 leading blockchain scholars from top-tier institutions including York University, Princeton University, and ETH Zurich. It is currently undertaking an ambitious slate of research and proof-of-concept pilot projects that span multiple research areas, industries, and partner collaborations, united under the goal of making the business community take notice of and embrace blockchain technology.

Among Insolar Research’s ranks is Prof. Henry Kim, co-director of York University’s blockchain lab in Toronto and one of the leading academic scholars in North America, and Prof. Alexandru Butean, Senior Lecturer Professor in Computer Science and architect of the Blockchain Society in Estonia. Eight other members round out the team’s growing ranks, each contributing a mix of blockchain expertise with other industrial research specializations, such as cryptography, security, IoT, and AI/ML.

“Insolar Research is pushing the boundaries of blockchain science,” says Prof. Henry Kim. “More than that, it’s bringing that science to real-world enterprise use, showing companies the tangible benefits of blockchain and solving the urgent hurdles they face in adopting it.”

In keeping with Insolar’s open source values, Insolar Research will freely publish and share its thought leadership and research findings with the world.

“Insolar Research is a vital component of the Insolar ecosystem,” says Insolar CEO Andrey Zhulin, “It brings thought leadership and academic rigor to our technology platform. It also advances the frontiers of knowledge for the greater community, creating a rising tide that will lift all boats.”

Insolar Research’s current slate of projects has the team collaborating with top industry leaders and government officials on a wide range of critical problems. The slate includes:

• Investigating how a modern society would function if blockchain technology were applied at all levels. This project follows EU directives for 2020 and creates the architecture, requirements, and tools necessary for public institutions and enterprises to integrate their services to achieve fairness in an unfair world.

• Businesses remain hesitant in their blockchain adoption. SimuChain simulates how blockchain technology can impact the business processes of an enterprise organization, decreasing uncertainty and demonstrating tangible benefits.

• 2 million euro project that will create the factory of the future by using IoT products and services to optimize the interplay between humans, computers, and their environment. This project is funded by the Romanian government and its specifications were drafted following discussions with top industry leaders throughout Europe.

• Making the case for how blockchain technology can improve supply chain provenance and food safety. This project leverages smart contracts to execute a provenance trace and enforce traceability constraints.

• Proposing a blockchain-enabled electricity microgrid that incentivizes the use of local, renewable energy sources to decrease greenhouse gas emissions.

• Investigating how blockchain technology impacts the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) and how the organization can provide standardized technical specifications for the provenance and authenticity of goods.

• Examining how adopting blockchain technology can increase the global competitiveness of food manufacturers and exporters in Canada, especially in Ontario.

• Investigating how tightly coupled blockchains for different enterprise operations (e.g., Financing and Operations) can increase productivity, improve resource allocation, and minimize the risks and costs of information asymmetry (i.e., where one party has access to better or more information than the other party.)

Disclosure: This article includes a client of an Espacio portfolio company