--- title: "Sui Funds University Researchers Exploring AI, an Energy Market, and Hybrid Blockchain Games" description: "Winners of the Sui Academic Research Awards delivered proposals ranging from gaming to DeFi to artificial intelligence." author: "Sui Foundation" datePublished: 2023-11-07 dateModified: 2026-07-16 category: "Developer Resources" readTime: "3 min" canonical: https://www.sui.io/blog/academic-research-grants-2023 --- # Sui Funds University Researchers Exploring AI, an Energy Market, and Hybrid Blockchain Games The Sui Foundation is pleased to announce the recipients for the first round of Sui Academic Research Awards (SARAs). The SARAs program delivers grants to fund research that advances Sui blockchain technology. The academic and research community responded to our initial call with a large number of high-quality proposals. The nine accepted proposals cover a variety of topics such as tokenomics, mechanisms for smart contracts, and hybrid blockchain games. Grants totaling USD $225,000 were awarded to researchers distributed across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Greece, and Denmark. ## Overview of Accepted Proposals **Project:** Hybrid Blockchain Games **Research team:** [**Ari Juels**](https://www.engineering.cornell.edu/faculty-directory/ari-juels) **Institution:** Cornell Tech **Proposal overview:** Blockchain technology is built around transparency and verifiable systems. However, current blockchain games rely on opaque centralized systems to facilitate action-oriented gameplay engines. This research explores extending blockchain technology's trust features further into games that bridge on- and off-chain systems. **Project:** Solidity Mover: Solidity to Sui Smart Contract Transpilation **Research team:** [**Rabimba Karanjai**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rabimba/)  and [Weidong (Larry) Shi](https://uh.edu/nsm/computer-science/people/spotlight/spotlights/2014/larry-shi.php) **Institution:** University of Houston **Proposal overview:** The goal of this research involves developing artificial intelligence to automatically translate smart contracts across programming languages. The resulting Large Language Model (LLM) framework and tooling will translate existing Solidity contracts to Move-based Sui contracts. This project will explore the more generalized problem of reliable and correct program transpilation between Solidity and Move, two low-resource languages without prior training of human developers.  **Project:** SUI Volatility Modeling **Research team:** [**George Giannopoulos**](https://www.kingston.ac.uk/staff/profile/dr-george-giannopoulos-426/) **Institution:** Department of Accounting, Finance, and Informatics, Kingston University, Kingston Business school **Proposal overview:** This project will investigate the feasibility of a model that forecasts SUI's volatility. Using recent advances in econometrics, the research will attempt to predict SUI volatility as accurately as other mainstream assets. **Project:** Cryptokurtosis **Research team:** [**George Filis**](http://www.econ.upatras.gr/en/people/teaching-staff/filis-george) **Institution:** Department of Economics, University of Patras **Proposal overview:** This research will assess whether the daily risk metrics currently used by institutional investors to calculate their minimum capital requirements can adequately provide protection against financial stress. Specifically, the project considers whether higher trading frequency leads to higher potential losses. **Project:** Differentially Private Mechanisms for Smart Contracts **Research team:** [**James Hsin-yu Chiang**](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=9NcawdAAAAAJ&hl=en) **Institution:** Cryptography and Security Department: Computer Science Institute at Aarhus University **Proposal overview:** This research investigates using differential privacy (DP) to protect individuals interacting with privacy-preserving smart contracts. The project highlights the need for universal mechanisms applicable to smart contracts and blockchain technology. **Project:** Enhancing Geospatial Diversity in Blockchains: A Step Towards True Decentralization **Research team:** [**Hans-Arno Jacobsen**](https://www.ece.utoronto.ca/people/jacobsen-h-a/) **Institution:** Middleware Systems Research Group (MSRG), University of Toronto **Proposal overview:** This proposal addresses the challenge of enhancing decentralization through increasing geospatial diversity among Validators. Geo-spatial diversity among network Validators enhances robustness and fairness in blockchains, for example offering resilience against regional disasters. **Project:** Securing the Foundation of Move **Research team:** [**Meng Xu**](https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~m285xu/) **Institution:** University of Waterloo **Proposal overview:** This project secures the foundation of the Move programming language, including both its conceptual semantics and toolchain implementation.  **Project:** Spec2: Interactive Dual-level Specification Inference via Symbolic Summarization **Research team:** [**Taesoo Kim**](https://taesoo.kim/) **Institution:** Systems Software and Security Lab at Georgia Tech **Proposal overview:** This project constructs a holistic specification inference framework, Spec2, to automatically deduce a high-quality set of specifications, similar to what experts might develop manually. Although the general concept of specification inference is not new, practical tools are nonexistent in the smart contract domain, a gap for Spec2 to fill. **Project:** An AMM-based Decentralized Exchange Market for Peer-to-Peer Energy Trading **Research team:** [**Petr Musilek**](https://apps.ualberta.ca/directory/person/pmusilek) **Institution:** Faculty of Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept, University of Alberta **Proposal overview:** This research proposes a novel decentralized system for peer-to-peer energy trading on the Sui blockchain with automated market makers' mechanism and zero-knowledge proof technologies.  We would like to thank all those who submitted proposals for the Sui Academic Research Awards program. Sui represents a new generation of blockchain technology and an excellent opportunity to explore its potential. For those who are interested in the program, please [submit your proposals](https://sui.io/research-awards) for the next round by January 4, 2024.