UCL Becomes The First University To Join Hedera Hashgraph’s Governing Council

One of the world’s top universities, University College London (UCL), has joined the governing council of Hedera Hashgraph, the distributed ledger platform said in a blog post on 6 May.

According to the announcement, as part of the governing council, UCL will now run a node on the Hedera Hashgraph public network, and will be responsible for approving updates to the Hedera platform. The university will also be able to offer the Hedera Consensus Service to its students and faculty, as well as participate in forthcoming sub-committees.

The CEO and co-founder of Hedera Hashgraph, Mance Harmon, said in the blog post:

“The addition of UCL to the Hedera Governing Council marks a historic moment. As the very first university on the council, they help Hedera expand our reach into the education sector, with the engagement of a leading global educational institution already making waves in the DLT space.”

Hedera’s goal is to bring together up to 39 international organizations from various industries into its governing council, which follows a decentralized governance model. UCL has become the 13th member to join the council, which consists of organizations from multiple industries, such as telecommunications, cloud computing, aviation, supply chain, and IT. The current governing body is made up of companies such as IBM, Boeing, Google, Deutsche Telekom, Swisscom Blockchain, and others.

Recently, the university’s Centre for Blockchain Technology entered into a partnership with the International Association for Trusted Blockchain Applications (INATBA) and the European Commission with the goal of coordinating blockchain providers responding to the COVID-19 health crisis in Europe.

Paolo Tasca, Executive Director at UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies, said in today’s blog post:

“The recently launched COVID19 Task Force is just one example of how we will continue to support blockchain-based solutions in addressing profound global challenges, and we look forward to expanding the potential of distributed ledgers through our work with Hedera.”

Software development firm Acoer has already used the Hedera Hashgraph to create a digital timestamp service for a COVID-19 database. All important coronavirus data coming from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization is now accessible to scientists and media in a summarized overview.