Which City in the World Has A New Lab With Six New PhD Students Focused On Identity, Blockchain and…

Which City in the World Has A New Lab With Six New PhD Students Focused On Identity, Blockchain and Advanced Cryptography?

Which city in the world in the next few weeks will see six new PhD students starting in a new research lab with a focus on identity, blockchain and advanced cryptography?

Singapore? London? Zug? Berlin?

Nope … Edinburgh. This week we officially launch the Blockpass Identity Lab — a world’s first with a focus on citizen centric systems and identity. After that, we roll-up our sleeves and focus on building a new world. With three highly successful spin-outs under our belt, we are ready to make an impact.

I can hide the fact that I adored Edinburgh the first minute I saw it, and I still adore it. I thus strongly believe that there is no better place on the planet to build a new world than in Edinburgh. It is full of smart and enterprising people, and who want to work together and who want to create impact.

Our new lab has some amazing people in it already, with Liam Bell leading up our Blockchain research work, alongside Dr Owen Lo, who has been cracking cryptography and IoT devices. On the academic side we have Dr Zakwan Jaroucheh, Dr Rameez Asif and Dr Nikolaos Pitropakis. They will work alongide our six new PhD students in areas around zero knowledge proof, homomorphic encryption, Blockchain, light-weight cryptography, and other related areas.

I hope, soon, that Edinburgh will be included in the Top 10 places for Blockchain around the world, and that we can grow a community of experts, and attract/support new companies and individuals from around the world to develop in the lab and across the city. With Wallet Services, Spiritus, and Apii, we see a strong community growing in Scotland, and we hope to play our part in nurturing new ideas and developing a strong scientific base around cryptography.

Great cities of the future will be developed through the talent they can attract from across the world, and in a shared vision of how cities can be used a base to fuse new ideas. There’s few better places than Edinburgh for this to happen.

Several centuries ago, my city showed the world an enlightened approach to how our societies should operate, and I believe it can show the way in building a new world, and this one will be virtual and build on a solid foundation of trust.

The launch is on Wednesday, and we have a conference on Friday, so why not come along:

It will be broadcast live, so don’t worry if you can’t make it along.