Wondering whether blockchain has captured the imagination of college students? Look no further than the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where nearly one-third of the MBA students in the Kenan-Flagler Business School class of 2019 are members of a blockchain club.

It’s not just the students. “At the faculty level interest in blockchain has grown campus-wide,” says Professor Eric Ghysels, who splits his time between the business school and UNC Chapel Hill’s economics department. The technology, Ghysels tells ThirtyK, is gaining attention from faculty in not only the business and economics departments but also in other UNC schools and departments, “from computer science to the law school.”

And that’s a good thing because if blockchain is to expand and even go mainstream there will be a need for workers to handle the many technical aspects. That’s where Ripple comes in.

UNC Chapel Hill is one of 17 universities located in the U.S. and around the world sharing in the $50 million University Blockchain Research Initiative from Ripple, the technology company behind a popular payment protocol and exchange network. Announced last week, the initiative’s goal is to “support and accelerate university research.” This will be done via a broad scope of subjects and disciplines involved in making blockchain a reality, from computer science and engineering to business, finance and the law as well as on how the technology is fostering new connections among them.

Putting blockchain to use in the real world will require a generation of workers with a broad grasp of technology, economics, entrepreneurship, history and law.

“Both research and teaching in this area must be interdisciplinary,” says Ghysels. “The new technology addresses privacy issues, poses regulatory and law enforcement challenges and provides new gateways for entrepreneurship as it uproots existing and established industries, and that’s just a short list.”

A Broad Focus

The Ripple grant reflects a recognition that universities continue to drive much of the research that has advanced the blockchain and its underlying technologies, including cryptography and networking.

“Academia has traditionally been a critical driver of technical innovation,” Eric van Miltenburg, senior vice president of global operations at Ripple, said in a Ripple news release. “The University Blockchain Research Initiative is an acknowledgment of the vital importance of the unique role universities will play in advancing our understanding and application of cryptography and blockchain technology.”

Some of the 17 universities participating in the initiative are focused heavily on the technical aspects of the blockchain. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, will focus on a new financial technology initiative within its computer science and artificial intelligence lab, while the University of Oregon will fund cybersecurity research and teaching.