The University of Waterloo is going to open a new research laboratory for artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain supported by a $1-million USD ($1.4 million CAD) donation from product-development company Interop Labs.
Dubbed the GENESIS Lab, which stands for “Generative AI for Secure, Interconnected Systems,” the new laboratory will be located inside the university’s David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science. According to Interop Labs, the new space aims to foster collaboration between academia and industry working at the intersection of AI and blockchain.
Interop was founded by CEO and University of Waterloo associate professor Sergey Gorbunov in 2021, who is also the initial developer of the Axelar Web3 interoperability network. Axelar is a platform that allows applications to communicate with each other across different blockchain infrastructures. It raised a $35-million USD Series B round at a $1-billion valuation in 2022.
“Superior capabilities powered by AI, coupled with global distribution and payments rails offered by blockchain systems, demand new attention to how systems are built and used,” Gorbunov said in a statement. “Waterloo is uniquely positioned to address these challenges, given its amazing talent, open innovation principles and track record.”
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The lab will look to attract research talent to the university by offering industry seminars and postgraduate scholarships, as well as 12 PhD fellowships and six undergraduate fellowships administered by the student-run organization Waterloo Blockchain. The non-profit university club provides an environment for students to learn about Web3 development, on-chain analytics, and research.
Interop said the new facility follows a similar initiative at Stanford University this past December. The school struck a partnership with Eliza Labs to help researchers study how AI agents can transform digital currency systems. The partnership uses Eliza Labs’ open-source autonomous agent development framework to research how AI agents can establish trust, co-ordinate actions, and make decisions within decentralized financial systems.
Feature image courtesy Waterloo Blockchain.