Sorry I didn't give any news earlier but yes this project is alive.

We plan to release an updated version of the client matching bitcoin 0.9.2 by the end of this week.
I still need to finish the PoW part and start testing the code before release it. Once this is released, we'll move forward to implement the paper design in the next release (0.9.9). This phase will be lead (at least in the coding part) by the guy who wrote the paper with me looking over.