Four universities have been chosen to receive grants of $75,000 each for their research teams to pursue projects aimed at strengthening Internet infrastructure. The grants are being awarded as part of a Verisign, Inc. program designed to promote and foster Internet innovation and in conjunction with the company’s commemoration of 25 years of .com. The researchers will present their findings at a Washington, D.C. symposium later this year. The grant awards will be issued to the universities following final agreement between Verisign and the universities.

Winners were chosen in four categories:

• Internationalization of the Internet: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
• Domain Name System (DNS) Security: University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
• Infrastructure Applications: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Internet Infrastructure: University of Michigan

“At Verisign, we are committed to ensuring the infrastructure of the Internet is constantly evolving to meet new demands, and supporting these types of research projects is critical to that effort,” said Mark McLaughlin, president and chief executive officer of Verisign. “These grant recipients will help to pioneer the next generation of the Internet and continue to shape how we live in an increasingly connected world.”

Distinguished judges for the grants included Rod Beckstrom, President and CEO of ICANN; Vint Cerf, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google; Michael Chertoff, former Homeland Security Secretary; Paul Mockapetris, computer scientist and inventor of the Domain Name System; and Danny McPherson, Chief Security Officer at Verisign.

The winner in the Internationalization of the Internet category was “Techniques for Achieving Positive Anonymity,” submitted by Shlomi Dolev at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. The project explores anonymity on the Internet, and when remaining anonymous online is appropriate and when it is not, and attempts to define and propose schemes for conditional anonymity.

The winner in the DNS Security category was “Constructing a Functional Name System,” submitted by Anil Madhavapeddy at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. The purpose of this project, known as Mirage, is to develop a clean-slate operating system whose goal is to run reliably, securely and rapidly on the Internet, and is designed to be simpler than systems currently in use.

The winner in the Infrastructure Applications category was “Enabling Responsive Web Applications with the Accelerated Secure Association Protocol,” submitted by Philip Brighten Godfrey at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This project is developing methods to accelerate the Web and other interactive networked applications, via secure, deployable extensions to the domain name system (DNS) and transport control protocol (TCP).

The winner in the Internet Infrastructure category was “Enhancing Mobile Internet Infrastructure for Improved Performance and Security,” submitted by Z. Morley Mao at the University of Michigan. This project aims to investigate mobile network infrastructure support to improve network performance, energy efficiency, and security assurance for mobile users and service providers.