IOG + Stanford

Stanford IOG Research Hub

Research Hub - Call for Proposals

Call for Proposals

The Input Output Research Hub (IORH), funded by Input-Output Global, is soliciting original proposals for research in the field of blockchain science by Stanford faculty and students for the academic year 2022-2023. Original proposals are solicited in the field of blockchain science as it is approached from computer science, engineering, public policy, political science, law, and management. Interdisciplinary efforts are particularly encouraged.

IORH will distribute a total of $1.5M in funding for the academic year 2022-2023.

Important Dates

Categories

You can apply across two different categories; either as a principal investigator or as a student.

Principal Investigators

This category is open to all Stanford Principal Investigators eligible for grants. You can apply for a grant to be provided to your research lab, and the grant money can then be used to fund research by undergraduate students, graduate students, post-docs, or faculty.

The application for PIs must account for a grant budget pertaining to the one-year period Mar 1, 2023 to Feb 29, 2024. The grant application must include full indirect costs.

Students

The student category is open to all Stanford enrolled students in good standing, and is mainly targeting undergraduate students. Graduate students and postdocs are encouraged to apply through their Principal Investigator.

As a student, you will receive a scholarship to perform summer research over the course of the 2023 summer quarter. Your research is required to be performed in collaboration with a faculty in the context of a research lab. It is the responsibility of the student to find a faculty who is willing to supervise their work.

You can apply individually or in a group. If you apply as a group, you are expected to collaborate during your summer research internship. If the grant is awarded, all the students in the group will be funded.

Format

To apply for your grant, please fill in the grant proposal template. You must fill in all relevant fields. The descriptions provided should be concise and preferably should fit within the template dimensions.

Submitting

Submit your Proposal

Upon receiving your proposal, we will inform you via email that we have received it. When the notification date arrives, we will inform you via email whether your proposal has been accepted or rejected.

Evaluation Criteria

We will judge submissions based on the following criteria.

Scientific merit

  1. Novelty. Whether your proposed research pursues a novel idea, a path that has not been previously explored in the literature.
  2. Feasibility. Whether we deem your proposed research to be feasible within the timeframe provided and realistic given the experience and background of the persons conducting the research.
  3. Deliverability. Whether you have set concrete, measurable goals that allow us to objectively assess whether your research agenda has been successfully completed both throughout and at the end of the research timeframe.
  4. Impact. Whether your research is important for the field, and whether it will make an important difference and be recognized by the experts in the field. Impact can be both practical/applied, or theoretical.
  5. Relevance. Whether your research pertains to the broad area of blockchain science and falls within the field of blockchain research. Whether you are coming from the field of computer science, engineering, public policy, political science, law, or management, your proposal must be focused on blockchains.

Congruity to the mission of Input Output

The second category of criteria on which proposals will be assessed is relevance to IOG products and systems. The proposal must describe the impact and relevance of the project in the context of one or more of the areas covered by IOG systems and products, as described here. Beyond proposals that directly focus on IOG products, we also solicit proposals of more foundational scientific nature that would promise impact on the future development of any of the above systems or could lead to introducing additional systems of interest for IOG. We also welcome proposals that are co-developed with external stakeholders.

Proposals that have relevance to real world problems encountered in emerging markets with a focus on Africa are also particularly welcome. This includes questions of identity, governance and finance (see for e.g., “RealFi”). For instance proposals related to reducing the cost of finance for small and medium sized enterprises, or reducing the cost of remittance. Proposals related to Kenya and Nigeria are particularly desired given IOG’s footprint in these countries.

Finally, interdisciplinary applications are particularly encouraged and will be given priority.

Submissions are non-anonymous and committee members will be able to see the names of the proposal submitters.

Openness and Transparency

IORH mandates that all research is published under an open license. This means that papers and all relevant artifacts produced through partial or full funding by the IORH must be published under a Creative Commons BY 4.0 license, and must be uploaded to the open archive arXiv or ePrint or both. You may not submit your paper to conferences or journals that require you to forfeit these open copyright obligations to the IORH.

Any software that is developed in conjunction with the grant must be published as open source software under an MIT license and made available in a public code repository such as GitHub or GitLab.

If you have questions regarding making your paper or code open source, please contact us and we will be happy to provide more information.

Ethics and Etiquette

Proposals must be original and pertain to future work which the researchers plan to perform. The authors must not solicit funding for work already performed or substantially overlaps with work already performed.

While any member of the IORH committee is welcome to apply for a grant, members must abstain from discussions on and voting for their own or their student grants.

Committee

Stanford

Input Output

Administration