VeriSign Awards $75,000 to Four Universities for Promoting Internet Innovation

To promote and foster Internet innovation and also to commemorate “25 years of .com,” VeriSign has chosen four universities to receive grants of $75,000 each based on projects aimed at strengthening Internet infrastructure. At the Washington, D.C. symposium, researchers will present their findings, following which grant awards will be issued to the universities.

In a release, Mark McLaughlin, president and chief executive officer of VeriSign (News - Alert) said, “At VeriSign, we are committed to ensuring the infrastructure of the Internet is constantly evolving to meet new demands, and supporting these types of research projects is critical to that effort. These grant recipients will help to pioneer the next generation of the Internet and continue to shape how we live in an increasingly connected world.”

Judging was conducted by a distinguished panel of experts including Rod Beckstrom, president and CEO of ICANN; Vint Cerf, vice president and chief Internet evangelist at Google (News - Alert); Michael Chertoff, former Homeland Security secretary; Paul Mockapetris, computer scientist and inventor of the Domain Name System; and Danny McPherson, chief security officer at VeriSign.

In the Internationalization of the Internet category, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel was chosen as the winner for its "Techniques for Achieving Positive Anonymity," submitted by Shlomi Dolev.

Across the DNS Security category, Anil Madhavapeddy at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom received the grant for his paper "Constructing a Functional Name System.” The Mirage project focuses on designing a simple and clean-slate operating system that operates reliably, securely and rapidly on the Internet.

Brighten Godfrey at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign won in the Infrastructure Applications category for his paper, "Enabling Responsive Web Applications with the Accelerated Secure Association Protocol."

Lastly, in the Internet Infrastructure category, University of Michigan was the clear winner for its "Enhancing Mobile Internet Infrastructure for Improved Performance and Security," submitted by Z. Morley Mao. To improve network performance, energy efficiency and security assurance for mobile users and service providers, this project focuses on developing a robust mobile network infrastructure.