Katz Co-Organizes Three-Day Winter School on Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Technologies

Jonathan Katz, a professor of computer science and director of the Maryland Cybersecurity Center (MC2), is co-organizing a three-day Winter School for students, researchers, developers and professionals interested in learning about cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies.

The Winter School, scheduled for Jan. 15–17, 2017 at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, assumes no prior knowledge of cryptocurrencies on the part of the participants. It features a series of lectures addressing the underlying blockchain technology—an unalterable public ledger—that holds significant promise to change the future of financial transactions.

Both the development and research communities have recently made significant progress in this area, but are still facing many challenges, Katz says.

“Bitcoin, and blockchain technologies more generally, are one of the most exciting developments of recent years, with many compelling research problems remaining,” he says. “Our Winter School is intended to give students and other newcomers the background they need to start working in this area.”

The Winter School also has tutorials by leading researchers, including Katz, who are working on blockchain and cryptocurrencies. These talks will focus on topics including cryptographic background, analysis of the Bitcoin protocol in adversarial and game-theoretical settings, Ethereum and smart contracts, and techniques for enabling anonymous transactions.

Learn more here.