IOHK, a blockchain and research development company, has announced that the first cohort of graduates have completed their training at the summer course run by it and are now ready to work in the blockchain industry.

The summer course was offered free of charge to computer science graduates in Athens who had been selected by university professors. The course in coding for cryptocurrencies focuses on Haskell – a programming language that is in demand in the area of blockchain because of its significant security advantages. IOHK’s Haskell and Cryptocurrencies course ran from July 17, 2017 to September 22, 2017.

“Corporations and financial institutions are increasingly seeking Haskell developers, but are faced with a shortage of skilled programmers. IOHK is delighted to have trained seven talented students into proficient Haskell developers. Building on IOHK’s growing legacy of sourcing and training high quality programmers and engineers from Greece, we are proud to have made several offers of employment to them,” IOHK Chief Scientist Aggelos Kiayias said.

The course was led by Dr. Lars Brünjes, Haskell Developer at IOHK, and Dr. Andres Löh, a Partner at boutique Haskell consulting firm Well-Typed. It aimed to give on-the-job training to the students, mostly in their fifth year at the National Technical University of Athens School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and some from University of Athens.

IOHK said that it intends to offer selected graduates from the program full-time positions in its newly established Athens Haskell Team. The new team will complement IOHK’s global network of blockchain research and development laboratories at University of Edinburgh and Tokyo Institute of Technology that bring together academics and students to collaborate on industry-inspired problems.

IOHK said that its course attempted to strike a balance between a theoretical background of functional programming and practical techniques for solving real-world problems. In addition to lectures, the students had to complete challenging assignments and programming projects, like creating a peer-to-peer network and performing a “handshake” with a Bitcoin node.

“By integrating several of IOHK’s internal project goals into the curriculum, students were given practical experience programming code that solved real, relevant industry problems,” Prof. Kiayias said.

FxWirePro launches Absolute Return Managed Program. For more details, visit http://www.fxwirepro.com/invest