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[IMPACT]

We aim to create a scientific hub in Argentina specifically designed to attract members of the scientific community, in particular STEM oriented scientists, to the Cardano ecosystem and its multiple possibilities.

Cardano’s technology has many scientific and technical challenges that may be approached in a decentralized manner. We need talented scientists and developers to tackle these challenges, but first there must be a widespread and visible community of scientists that understand and are engaged in our ecosystem.

These communities mainly exist in places such as the US, Europe, Russia, Japan, etc., but we need to strengthen their presence in LATAM. Our region hosts many scientific talents that could boost Cardano’s growth, but we need to create a network that welcomes and enables them.

This scientific hub would operate in a more traditional manner, organizing scientific symposiums and workshops to adapt itself to the academic world and its idiosyncrasies. But its topics won’t be “traditional” at all: the blockchain revolution; scaling solutions; decentralized validation; the advantages of PoS; smart contracts in the Cardano blockchain; SPO; dApps development, etc.

We believe that we can attract many young scientists from Argentina that are interested in researching and building a better ecosystem for Cardano.

Our proposal would address the challenge by creating a MVH that has a very specific target audience: young scientists in Argentina.

These scientists will be able to access the crypto world in an academic framework, and through a process that shields them from some of its more problematic edges (like Ponzi schemes and scams).

This is very important, because reputation is a core aspect of a scientist identity. In Argentina we’ve had many unfortunate events, like the Zoe Ponzi scheme, that discredits the blockchain technology as a whole and drive away serious and promising developers and scientists.

Is a sad state of affairs, since the adoption of a decentralized currency may be the only viable solution for countries such as Argentina, which have an inflation rate that makes development almost impossible.

Our hub aims to show young scientists that there’s another side of the crypto phenomenon: the possibility to answer technical and scientific questions in a serious and groundbreaking environment such as the Cardano ecosystem.

This would not only add valuable human resources from LATAM for our ecosystem development, but would also drive adoption between the more conservative and serious investors, that would not spend any money on shady or weak projects.

The main challenge is to create an academic-friendly environment to showcase and divulge the potential of Cardano as a career defining subject for young STEM-oriented scientists.

As stated before, we’ll need to adjust this goal to the idiosyncrasies of the academic world, which heavily relies on credibility and requires high standards for discussion and intellectual production.

Our team comes from this academic background, so we understand the need to apply a more traditional approach (such as symposiums and workshops) in order to distinguish the Cardano community from the general discourse on cryptocurrencies that dominates media (and impacts on potentially valuable human resources, such as young scientists).

That is the main challenge: to efficiently communicate that Cardano is a serious project for serious developers and scientists in Argentina and LATAM. We’ll measure our success with this communicational goal in mind.

[FEASIBILITY]

TIMELINE - ROADMAP

The project will be structured around 4 big encounters over 12 months:

1. A symposium that address the blockchain as a technological revolution from a scientific perspective, with Cardano as the best example of a third-generation blockchain that can solve the problems inherent in most of the centralized monetary policies that countries such as Argentina suffer.

2. A symposium specifically design to engage young scientists in problems such as decentralized validation, the math behind a project’s tokenomics, smart contracts deployment, digital signatures, the PoS protocol and its advantages, and other technical topics that can attract STEM-oriented scientist to the crypto world.

3. A workshop on network infrastructure and Cardano validation nodes and integration, and the main builder’s tools that are involved in the process of interacting with the Cardano blockchain. The workshop will have a practical approach to educate its participants in these topics with the manifest goal to integrate them to our community.

4. A closing meet up, with an incubator format, that explains to STEM-oriented scientist how the Catalyst project works and how to subject a proposal to the Cardano community. This will include a brainstorming session limited to science-related projects. In this instance we hope to consolidate bonds between the scientific community and Cardano enthusiasts in our country.

These 4 encounters will be carried out in Buenos Aires and Cordoba, Argentina’s biggest cities with top-100 universities in the QS ranking.

Participation in the symposiums, as attendant or speaker, will be free in accordance with the screening process of a regular scientific seminary (registration, abstracts screening and review, acceptation and presentation). We’ll also invite members of the Argentinian Cardano community and computational scientist to partake as main speakers. These speakers will also be invited to dictate the workshop and will be economically compensated.

1. Symposium (x2) organization, materials and space rental: 2x2.000 USD = 4.000 USD

a) Space rental (3 days): 2x250 = 500 USD.

b) Speakers fee, mobility, travel expenses (3 speakers per symposium, 500 USD per speaker): 2x1500 USD = 3.000 USD
c) Organization: 500 USD

1. Workshop organization, materials and space rental: 2.800 USD

a) Co-working space (5 days): 400 USD.

b) Coordinators fee, mobility, travel expenses (3 coordinators, 800 USD per coordinator): 2.400 USD.

c) Organization: 500 USD

3. Closing meet up organization, materials and space rental: 1.620 USD

a) Co-working space (2 days): 160 USD.

b) Coordinators fee, mobility, travel expenses (3 coordinators, 320 USD per coordinator): 960 USD.

c) Organization: 500 USD.

4. Social media outreach and project managment -part time- (12 months): 1.200 USD.

Benjamín Marcolongo: PhD student in physics. Expert in numerical computational problems involving machine learning, neural networks and dynamical systems. Physics and programming Professor at Universidad Nacional de Córdoba and Universidad Católica Argentina. I majored in quantum mechanics and have developed an algorithm to compute bases of irreducible spherical tensor operators. Currently I am dedicated to modeling biological systems in the field of active matter.  https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-marcolongo-25365991

Héctor Peña Pollastri: PhD in pure Mathematics. Physicist. Professor at Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina - Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía y Física. Specialized knowledge in fields as Hopf algebras, representation theory, General relativity, Quantum Mechanics. With a background in data structures, discrete mathematics, graph theory, numerical simulations, and scientific programming in general. Most of these skills were acquired during my participation in several contests in competitive programming during my college years.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/h%C3%A9ctor-mart%C3%ADn-pe%C3%B1a-pollastri-610200224

Raúl E. Sendín: Expert in Digital Marketing and Community Management from the National Technological University of Buenos Aires. Financial analyst. Crypto-trader. Investor. Specialist in the decentralized finance project Cardano.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ra%C3%BAl-enrique-send%C3%ADn-a47995159

Horacio Baca Amenábar: Lawyer (third best GPA in my class) specialized in parliamentary procedure and Cyber Law. Staff officer and legislative coordinator. Legal Theory and Economic Theory Professor at Universidad de Buenos Aires and Universidad Nacional de Tucumán. Published two books and several articles in Law symposiums, magazines and political and tech related monthlies. Co-director of the digital magazine "Trama". PhD student in Constitutional Law.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/horacio-a-baca-amen%C3%A1bar-537215198

[AUDITABILITY]

Success metrics:

1. Number of registrations and attendants at Symposiums.

1. Number of registered and approved speakers at Symposiums.

1. Number of attendants that complete the 5-days Workshop.

1. Number of viable science-related proposals generated in the closing meet up.

1. Number of science related Catalyst proposals filed and/or funded in relation to point 4.

1. Number of young STEM-oriented scientists that actively participate in the Argentinian Cardano Community after the encounters.

We aim to have an attendance of at least 50 scientists, science students and developers per Symposium, and at least 10 approved speakers (not counting the main speakers).

We aim to have an attendance of at least 30 scientists, science students and developers for the Workshop and the closing meet up.

Goal: to develop and strengthen the relationship between young STEM-oriented scientists and the Argentinian Cardano Community.

Succes criteria: to have at least 30 new scientists, science students and developers that work actively in the Argentinian Cardano Community. To have at least 5 science-related proposals filled and/or funded in the Catalyst project.

This proposal is no a continuation of our team previous one (The Noether Protocol), but is closely related to its targets and ideals.

The Noether Protocol, funded in Fund7 (https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/382571#idea-tab-comments), is a decentralized protocol that aims to use a middleware (BOINC) to provide free processing power to the scientific communities of LATAM, incentivizing regular PC users to lend this processing power to the protocol in exchange for a token: the NOETH token, inspired by the renowned mathematician Emmy Noether.

Our funded project requires us to establish links and a working relationship with the Argentinian scientific community, particularly the STEM-oriented disciplines. This relationship is also necessary to augment the hubs reach and penetration in said community.

Our team is part of this community: we have CONICET (the main research institution in Argentina) scholars, university professors, etc. This creates a synergy between the proposals, which are not continuations of each other but still are linked through this networking process.

SDG Rating

SDG goals:

Goal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

SDG subgoals:

4.b By 2020, substantially expand globally the number of scholarships available to developing countries, in particular least developed countries, small island developing States and African countries, for enrolment in higher education, including vocational training and information and communications technology, technical, engineering and scientific programmes, in developed countries and other developing countries

Key Performance Indicator (KPI):

4.b.1 Volume of official development assistance flows for scholarships by sector and type of study

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