Protocol Labs Research is committed to supporting the innovation needed to build our decentralized future.

Today we are pleased to announce the expansion of the PL Research Grant Program to include a variety of new funding opportunities designed to support collaborative work on problems defined by the broader research community and critical to our work at Protocol Labs. To complement our current RFP program, these grants focus on research problems proposed by the applicants rather than strictly on those pre-defined by Protocol Labs.

Our new grants spectrum consists of the following awards:

• PhD Fellowships intended to support the development of an early-stage researcher conducting research in one of PL’s fields of interest.
• Postdoctoral Fellowships intended to support a postdoctoral researcher’s contributions to PL-related research.
• Implementation grants designed to support PL’s external academic collaborators in hiring short-term engineering consultants and contractors to develop and deploy critical software necessary to conduct PL-aligned research.
• Investigator awards intended to support experienced postdocs wishing to transition to running their own research project with the support of an appropriate host institution.
• Nucleation grants intended to support the development of a close collaboration between an early-stage researcher, their doctoral advisor, and a PL researcher on a project of relevance to PL’s research interests.
• Research sabbatical awards intended to support faculty conducting research in PL’s fields of interest during a 6-12 month sabbatical period, with a particular emphasis on supporting collaborative work with a PL researcher.
• Summer research grants designed to support faculty in conducting summer research in one of PL’s fields of interest, with a particular emphasis on carrying out collaborative work with a PL researcher.

We at PL Research believe that the future of decentralized systems research is open and distributed. We encourage proposals aligned with PL’s mission to drive breakthroughs in computing to push humanity forward, and we welcome unique perspectives and diverse backgrounds.

To learn more about the available opportunities and how to apply, please visit grants.protocol.ai.