Ripple’s University Blockchain Research Initiative (UBRI) is getting 11 new partner universities, including the National University of Singapore (NUS). FinTechnews Singapore reveals that Ripple’s partnership with NUS can help with the country’s talent gap with regards to fintech.
This can increase the number of talents working in the blockchain and other related fields by encouraging NUS to add pertinent course offerings. The prediction is based on the same effect UBRI had on the University of California where the program resulted in collaborations across departments and additional courses offered to gear towards fintech.
CIO revealed that the Ripple-NUS collaboration has resulted in the creation of a Fintech Society and the Cryptocurrency, Strategy, Techniques, and Algorithms Centre (CRYSTAL Centre).
Other universities working with the company include the University of Sao Paulo (Sao Paulo, Brazil), and Tsinghua University (Beijing, China).
‘Accelerate academic research’
As a platform for money and as the originator the cryptocurrency XRP, Ripple is intent on furthering the development of fintech. According to FinTechnews Singapore, Ripple launched UBRI in 2018 to facilitate academic research on technologies such as cryptocurrency, blockchain and digital payments.
In partnering with universities across the globe, Ripple aims to accelerate and expand research in related fields by providing financial and technical resources to partner institutions. To this end, the company invested $50 million with intentions to expand its financial commitment in the duration of the initiative, CIO reports.
The NUS School of Computing is at the forefront of this collaboration.