Karola Kirsanow | Protocol Labs Research
Karola Kirsanow
Research Program Manager/ Network Research
Education
PhD in Human Evolutionary Biology, 2009
Harvard University
MSc in Archaeological Science, 2004
Oxford University
BA in Archaeology, 2002
Cornell University
Karola holds a PhD in Human Evolutionary Biology from Harvard, where she worked on reconstructing palaeoenvironmental conditions relevant to hominid evolution. She has also conducted palaeogenetic research into modern human adaptations to diet and climate. She is broadly interested in complex networks of interaction in both natural and artificial contexts, and she is excited to support research into building resilient distributed systems at Protocol Labs.
Areas of Expertise
Biological networks, Human genetics
Blog posts
2023-03-31/News
New directions in Network Research
As Protocol Lab’s footprint in the public goods space has grown, the Network Research team has taken the lead on integrating and adapting PL’s work to the needs and interests of the scientific community, with the goal of designing and building public goods to move science forward faster.
2023-01-10/Blog
Announcing the final award for RFP-011, "Changing the Internet"
PL Research is pleased to announce the final research proposal funded as part of the Changing the Internet Initiative: a project by Maria Apostolaki and Jennifer Rexford of Princeton University’s Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science departments, respectively, to improve the state of the art in routing and edge networking.
2022-10-07/News, Team
Raymond Cheng joins PL Research
We are excited to welcome Raymond Cheng to the Protocol Labs Research team. We asked Raymond about his journey to Protocol Labs, the projects he will be working on, and his thoughts about future technological developments.
2022-09-16/Blog
Gitcoin Grants Round 15: getting DeSci on the SamePage
Protocol Labs is excited to support the Decentralized Science Matching Grant Funding Round in Gitcoin’s GR15, now live until 22 September, 2022. The Gitcoin Grants Program uses quadratic funding to leverage small contributions across a large and diverse network of contributors into large impact –- a new Web3-native way of sustainably funding public goods projects.
2022-08-08/News, Grants
Announcing RFP-014: The one with private retrieval
Can we speak privately? Unfortunately, our current options for private communication are limited, hamstrung by their reliance on a single-trusted-origin data publication model, high latencies, and security vulnerabilities. We think it is possible to design a scalable system that doesn’t sacrifice latency for privacy.
2022-07-25/Blog
Announcing the first award for RFP-011, "Changing the Internet"
PL Research is pleased to announce the first research project funded as part of the Changing the Internet Initiative: a project by Scott Shenker of ICSI and UC Berkeley, Arvind Krishnamurthy of the University of Washington, James McCauley of Mount Holyoke College, and Aurojit Panda of NYU to improve access to Web3 services by creating a better client interface and user experience for accessing Web3 content.
2022-06-30/Blog
New open problems in private data retrieval
tl;dr: We’d like to develop additional protocol-compatible primitives allowing users to interact privately with Web3 content. Central to the Web3 vision of an open, permissionless, and decentralized internet is the ability of parties to interact directly and privately with each other while retaining ownership of their data.
2022-06-20/Blog
Network Research and Bacalhau at DeSci Berlin
The Network Research team was excited to participate in DeSci Berlin, an amazing and very energized “unconference” that brought together researchers, technologists, and enthusiasts of science and web3 to discuss current problems and opportunities in the practice of science and workshop on how blockchain and decentralized technology can solve them.
2022-05-26/Blog
A Public Goods experiment on Filecoin: Retroactively funding impact with Quadratic Voting
The PL Network Goods team launched a quadratic voting funding experiment on Filecoin repositories with the help of maintainers and storage providers, rewarded community contributors, and built retroactive funding infrastructure for broader application.