The U.S. government will help fund a distributed ledger platform being developed by researchers at the University of California-San Diego.
Subhashini Sivagnanam, a researcher and software architect with the Data Enabled Scientific Computing division at the San Diego Supercomputing Center, won $818,433 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop the Open Science Chain (OSC), a proposed distributed ledger which will help researchers efficiently access and verify data collected through scientific experiments, according to the NSF's website.
NSF, a long-standing scientific organization, serves as a key conduit for research initiatives in the U.S. to tap federal resources. The government organization has funded a number of blockchain projects in previous years, including those focused on different aspects of cryptocurrency incentive mechanisms and blockchain technology use cases.
Public records show that the project entails "a web-based cyber infrastructure platform built using distributed ledger technologies that allows researchers to provide metadata and verification information about their scientific datasets and update this information as the datasets change and evolve over time in an auditable manner."
Simply put, the network would constitute a living – and digital – catalog of their work, growing as more information is developed and added. Researchers will be able to better trust the data they are examining, according to the abstract.
The grant will begin on Sept. 1, 2018, and carry through until Aug. 31, 2021, according to the award letter.
Supercomputer image via Shutterstock
The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.
Subhashini Sivagnanam, a researcher and software architect with the Data Enabled Scientific Computing division at the San Diego Supercomputing Center, won $818,433 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop the Open Science Chain (OSC), a proposed distributed ledger which will help researchers efficiently access and verify data collected through scientific experiments, according to the NSF's website.
NSF, a long-standing scientific organization, serves as a key conduit for research initiatives in the U.S. to tap federal resources. The government organization has funded a number of blockchain projects in previous years, including those focused on different aspects of cryptocurrency incentive mechanisms and blockchain technology use cases.
Public records show that the project entails "a web-based cyber infrastructure platform built using distributed ledger technologies that allows researchers to provide metadata and verification information about their scientific datasets and update this information as the datasets change and evolve over time in an auditable manner."
Simply put, the network would constitute a living – and digital – catalog of their work, growing as more information is developed and added. Researchers will be able to better trust the data they are examining, according to the abstract.
The grant will begin on Sept. 1, 2018, and carry through until Aug. 31, 2021, according to the award letter.
Supercomputer image via Shutterstock
The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.
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Francisco Gimeno - BC Analyst Research conducive to DLT and blockchain development in Science is welcomed. This is not just a FinTech tool, and can be used to create a myriad of solutions which, as in this case, lead to more trust, openness and, we hope, free access to the research done. In fact, more funding should be available all over the world for these purposes.