At the core of the program are four ESRs. All of them enrolled in the PhD program at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. The student who started first (ESR1) defended the thesis last March obtaining the maximum qualification of Excellent. The tribunal was formed by 3 researchers of recognized prestige in the field. The other 3 PhD students continue their thesis at a good pace, with numerous international publications, and in fact, although they could deposit the thesis (a draft of the thesis was sent in February as deliverable), they will do it during the course of this year since we found funding for them. For ESR2 and ESR4 we have secured a grant from Prococol Labs to fund their final year of PhD, and for ESR3 we have secured funding from Ethereum Foundation. It is worth noting that both Protocol Labs and Ethereum Foundation are world leading companies in the blockchain field, and that all of them actively participated in securing resources for such funding. This process, guided and supervised by their supervisors, is also very important in the training process. We intentionally sought funding from the business world to encourage these industrial doctoral students to collaborate with companies.
In addition, the PI of the project and ESR4 supervisor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra obtained a grant under the Universitat Pompeu Fabra's Planetary Wellbeing program to use Blockchain as a Governance Platform for Renewable Energy Communities. ESR4 participated intensively in the proposal preparation. Finally ESR1 will be hired to execute the project for 4 months. It is also expected that this will foster collaboration between the different ESRs and result in some international publication.
The industrial aspect of all of them has crystallized not only in funding collaborations with companies in their fourth year of PhD, but also in the fact that the ESR1 has embarked on exploring the possibility of valorizing its results in the form of a spin-off under the guidance of the PI of the project. Jointly they have been granted with a competitive grant (INNOVALORA) of 50k from Pompeu Fabra University to start shaping the spin-off.
