There is also Proof of Stake to secure the network, which does not waste electricity as much and on top of that the amount of stake you get for each vote to secure the network could also be made dependent on the amount of work you do for a science project as measured by BOINC.

The identification of which user gets what amount of "Proof of research" bonus is done via hashed BOINC email, as the email in BOINC is private and cannot be accessed by others.

See my other post about gridcoin.