Polymarket Institute launches with fellowship program and founding scientific director
Polymarket has launched the Polymarket Institute and named Brian Jabarian as its Founding Scientific Director. Jabarian announced the role in an August 19 post, noting he had worked with the team for ten months prior. The institute also unveiled a Science Fellowship that will fund 12 fellows per year with $10,000 grants each for independent prediction market research. The program aims to advance academic understanding of market mechanisms and applications.
The institute gives Polymarket a formal research arm that shapes how academics and policymakers understand prediction markets. That credibility matters because Polymarket is currently under CFTC investigation while expanding into controversial contract types. Brian Jabarian's ten-month runway suggests the institute was built before the regulatory heat intensified, positioning it as a proactive vehicle rather than a reactive defense. The fellowship recruits twelve researchers annually who may produce scholarship regulators cite in future rulemakings.
For competitors without equivalent research infrastructure, Polymarket's ability to credential its own mechanisms becomes a structural advantage. The $10,000 grants are modest by foundation standards, but they buy mindshare in a field with little existing academic funding. The real payoff comes if CFTC staff or congressional committees treat institute-affiliated research as neutral expertise. Fellowships that look independent on paper can still advance an operator's preferred framing of what prediction markets are for.
The fellowship announcement follows Polymarket's recent expansion into drug and TV betting with Kalshi, as both platforms stretch the CFTC's event-contract framework into unregulated territory that invites fresh enforcement risk.