Columbia-IBM Center for Blockchain and Data Transparency Research Seed Funds Program
The digital transformation of the economy is creating a new natural resource: Digital data. Businesses transform the data about their customers, suppliers, or partners, into profitable products and services. It is natural to ask: What is the value of this data? How can individuals or organizations whose data is being collected participate in this data marketplace and exercise control over the access and use of their data? Extrapolating further, the value of a collection of individual datasets is often far greater than the values of each of the individual datasets; for example, fraud detection is likely to be more effective when banks combine their data, the success of precision medicine is predicated on merging records across multiple hospitals across the world, etc. What incentives can we provide for organizations to share their data for social good? What policies and mechanisms can be implemented to avoid biases in such collection processes? How can one provide guarantees of security and privacy?
Advances in technologies such as blockchain, homomorphic encryption, secure multi-party computation, zero knowledge proofs, and even secure hardware now make it possible for mutually distrusting organizations to share their data with each other in a secure, privacy-preserving, and tamper-proof manner. Some of these technologies do not rely on a (centralized) trusted third- party. These capabilities are already leading to novel applications in supply-chain management and food security, but the potential to impact all sectors, such as health, finance, energy, legal, media and entertainment, is enormous.
Columbia-IBM Center for Blockchain and Data Transparency aims to support research, educational, and entrepreneurial activities broadly in the area of data sharing, fair use of data, blockchains or related technologies.
Program Goal & Topics
The Columbia-IBM Center for Blockchain and Data Transparency brings together cross-disciplinary teams to advance innovation in blockchain & data transparency and closely associated topics for the good of society and industries that will drive new science and technology, develop thought leadership, and influence policy.
The call invites proposals that explore topics that are aligned with the mission statement of the Center. Proposals exploring innovations in relevant technology areas such as blockchains, security, cryptography, network science, machine learning, and also business, legal and regulatory problems related to data transparency, data ownership, valuation, and its use in specific industries and applications.
The goal of this program is to support novel projects that are exploratory and not yet ready for funding from traditional sources. We anticipate successful projects will be able to secure long-term funding from external sources after completion of the seed projects.
Funding and Obligations
Funding is available for up to five projects, up to $100,000 annually, with the opportunity to apply for renewal of support up to a maximum of two years. As a condition of funding, awardees will be required to submit quarterly financial reviews and biannual progress reports. Eligibility for continued funding for a second year will also require a progress report and justification of needs for continued research. All reports must include progress on external funding proposal submission(s). Furthermore, the awardees would be expected to participate in furthering the mission of the Center by acknowledging the support in all papers on the topics, and participating in workshops and demo days, as appropriate.
Proposal Process
The deadline for submission is October 15, 2019 by 4:00 pm. We will not accept incomplete or late submissions. We anticipate notifying award recipients by November 20, 2019.
Please submit the following materials via email, in .doc or .pdf format, to: [email protected], by the October 15, 2019, 4:00 pm deadline:
- Application Cover Page
- Project Proposal (5-page maximum, single space, 12-font, Times New Roman)
- Budget in Excel (template provided) with a budget justification. Funds will be awarded as an Industry Grant (PG Project) with 35% IC to be included in your budget.
- CV’s for Faculty/Collaborators (2 page NSF style format)
- The proposals will be reviewed by a technical committee consisting of researchers drawn from relevant Departments and Schools across Columbia University and from IBM. The final selection will be done by the Center Steering Committee.
All the software and copyrightable material created in the performance of the projects funded by these seed grant must be made publicly available, either by publication or by open source license or open copyright license. Unless otherwise agreed upon, Columbia will grant a license for patents (if any) filed for inventions developed under support of this seed funding to IBM which will be worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, and non-transferable.
Projects Funded by the Center in the Past
Here is a description of the three research projects funded by the Center during academic year 2018-2019. One project involved research for a certification framework for smart contracts. Another one involved incentive-compatible blockchains. While the first two projects arose from the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the third one was initiated by Business School faculty members to study the changing economics of knowledge production.
Review Criteria
All projects must be relevant to data transparency and blockchain, and the proposers should select the areas closest to their proposal in the section on Program Goals. The following criteria will be used in ranking and selecting submissions for seed funding:
- Impact on advancing the state of the art of the proposed project
- Novelty of the proposed project
- Need of the seed funding for the success of this project
- The intended follow-up to apply for subsequent external funding
- The review committee will rank projects within each area, and recommend a portfolio of projects across the areas for possible funding
- Impact on establishing legal systems or policies needed for broad applications of blockchain and data transparency technologies