Open Call: Fellowships @ Computable

At Computable, our day job is trying to define and develop the next canonical open source web technologies. How cool is that? However, it involves a lot of hard work, and it takes a community. Actually, it takes many communities. Since designing and building blockchain protocols is multidisciplinary by nature, it’s important to integrate expertise across several fields. This is certainly true for our work at Computable — an intersection of cryptography, distributed systems, artificial intelligence and more.

We thought a lot about how we can help bring together a diversity of talent and expertise. To that end, we’re launching the Fellowships @ Computable program to financially support short-term projects that we think will help not only us, but also the broader blockchain technology community. The fellowship will feature two tracks: Research Fellows and Data Fellows.

Research Fellows will receiving funding to work on a well-defined technology problem that they feel is integral to the blockchain universe. This could include ideas on tackling scalability, privacy, and more.

Data Fellows will build open data markets on top of our protocol in their areas of interest and domain expertise. Perhaps these are data networks for genomics, weather, or financial data. Perhaps something else we haven’t thought about. Data Fellows are also entrepreneurs. They will have receive large ownership in the data markets they build, including the tokens associated with those blockchain data markets.

During their tenure, Fellows become full members of our team. They will work closely with Computable’s core developers who will provide advice, mentorship, and technical support. We’re even giving Fellows a home. Winners are invited (and encouraged) to work out of our office in San Francisco if possible. Details about the program and application process are below — we’re looking forward to seeing what sorts of fun and impactful proposals we get.

Program specifics

• Applications on a rolling basis
• Minimum 3-month commitment
• Full-time or part-time (preference for full-time)
• Full-time fellows are funded up to $25k over the first 3 months with the possibility of extension
• Remote is OK — check out our team values (“We are global.”) — but slight preference for Fellows to work out of our office (San Francisco).

Application process
Send applications as well as questions and comments to fellowship@computable.io. Make sure to address the questions below as part of your submission. We will accept applications on a rolling basis, but we will only support a handful of fellowships at a time, so get yours in soon. Top applicants will be selected for interviews before final funding decisions are made. We will select winners primarily based on the excellence of their proposals, independent of how they compare to other submissions. However, the bar is high, and only absolute standouts will receive funding.

In your application, directly answer these questions below, keeping your submission to 2 pages maximum:

• What fellowship are you applying for (Research Fellow or Data Fellow)?
• Full-time or part-time? Remote or local (SF Bay Area)?
• What do you want to work on?
• Why are you well suited to work on this idea? Tell us about yourself.
• Why is this important?
• What can you accomplish in 3 months? (read: deliverables)
• What deliverables and timelines do you envision over a full year?
• Bonus: How did you hear about Fellowships @ Computable?

Suggested topics
We are completely open to new and creative ideas, but here are some subject matters just in case it helps guide your proposal.

• Consensus protocols
• Blockchain systems scalability
• Distributed systems for machine learning and artificial intelligence
• Cryptoeconomic design
• Cryptoeconomic security
• Privacy-preserving computations and transactions
• Secure multiparty computing
• Homomorphic encryption
• Differential privacy
• Federated learning

Good luck!
Apply: fellowship@computable.io

Originally published at www.computable.io.