xprize

[chris macrae]

http://www.xprize.org/prize-development/global-entrepreneurship

The goal of the Education and Global Development Prize Group is to develop new and innovative ways to address major challenges in agriculture, capital, education, health and water. The competitions seek to highlight the most scalable enterprises that create wealth and uplift entire populations from poverty.

The Education and Global Development Prize Group Advisory Committee is co-chaired by Naveen Jain, a philanthropist, entrepreneur and a technology pioneer.  Jain is the founder of InfoSpace, Intelius and Moon Express. Previously, he was a senior executive at Microsoft Corporation. Jain is a trustee of the board of Singularity University and serves as a director on the board of Coastal Aviation Software and Flow Mobile. He has been awarded many honors for his entrepreneurial successes and leadership skills.

"Innovation and entrepreneurship is the only sustainable way to solve the grand challenges facing humanity today. I am honored to be part of X PRIZE to find innovative solutions to education and global development through incentive prizes."— Naveen Jain

• Awarded
• In Development
• Concepts

In Development

Education Game X PRIZE

There is a global shortage of great teachers.  If an online or mobile gaming platform existed that was able to reliably teach students in a compelling and engaging fashion, it would transform education around the world for anyone with a smart phone. Imagine if learning a subject was fun and done with your best friends.

TB Diagnostics X PRIZE

Tuberculosis (TB) kills more people than any other curable infectious disease, with nearly two million victims annually. The most widely used test, smear microscopy, is 125 years old and routinely misses half of all cases and, in many regions, takes too long to get results.

Concepts Under Consideration

Low-Cost Housing X PRIZE

More than one billion people worldwide lack adequate housing. The cost, speed, and technologies of home construction have not changed in centuries. This competition seeks to bring to market new approaches to construction that will re-invent housing, making it very robust to natural disaster, low-cost energy, sanitation, and broadband-enabled utilizing modern-day technologies. This competition will ultimately usher in a new paradigm of affordable, sustainable, and dignified housing.

Girls’ Education X PRIZE

Girls’ primary school graduation rates in many countries are as low as 10-30 percent.  Literacy rates for female youth in many countries are only 25-50 percent.

Desalination X PRIZE

Nearly one billion people on Earth lack adequate access to safe drinking water and 1.5 million children die per year of water-borne diseases. In terms of supply, 97 percent of the Earth’s water is salt water and an additional two percent is tied up in polar ice caps, leaving less than one percent as accessible fresh water. Although approximately 70 percent of the world’s population lives on coastlines, readily available seawater cannot be converted to drinking water because current desalination technologies are expensive and energy-intensive. What if we had a breakthrough in desalination?

Micronutrients X PRIZE

A staggering two billion people suffer from micronutrient deficiency, which is perhaps the most prevalent and the most addressable part of world hunger. Micronutrients are vitamins and minerals (e.g., iodine, iron, vitamin A) that prevent brain damage and forestall disease. A group of Nobel-laureate economists ranked micronutrient interventions as the single most cost-effective way to combat global poverty.

Cookstoves X PRIZE

The humble cookstove is surprisingly the most mundane of killers. More than two billion people worldwide use biomass cookstoves, which can require hours to gather sticks and other fuel every day. Each year, nearly two million people, mostly women and children, die from carbon monoxide and other poisoning produced by incomplete combustion from these cookstoves.

African Entrepreneurship X PRIZE

There are countless talented potential entrepreneurs in Africa. However, the training and support for these entrepreneurs to build scalable businesses are lacking. Creating success stories and role models of entrepreneurs able to build new start-up companies that employ significant numbers of individuals will help eliminate poverty in African nations.

Democracy X PRIZE

In a world of ATMs and online banking that can provide reliable and secure records, blood is shed and nations are upended over the simple counting of votes in places ranging from Florida to Tunisia. The creation of an accurate, verifiable voting technology would be a crucial advancement in the promulgation and sustaining of democracy.

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The goal of the Energy & Environment Prize Group is to generate breakthroughs in clean energy, climate change, energy distribution/storage, energy efficiency/use, and water resource management.  Advances in these fields will lead to greater sustainability and efficiency, while reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.

• Awarded
• In Development
• Concepts

Awarded

Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE

Awarded September 2010

The $10 million Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE was a global competition to inspire a new generation of viable, safe, affordable and super fuel efficient vehicles. The winning teams were the $5 million Mainstream winner, Edison2; $2.5 million Alternative class (tandem seating) winner, X-Tracer; and $2.5 million Alternative class (side-by-side seating) winner, Li-ion Motors. With our partners at Consumer Reports, we advanced the adoption of a new metric, MPGe (Miles per Gallon or gasoline equivalent energy), that offers consumers the ability to make a better comparison of the next generation vehicles using a variety of energy sources and fuels to the conventional cars they drive today. The U.S. Department of Energy was a major supporter of the competition because they believe in incentivizing innovation through competition to reshape the automotive industry. To learn more, click here.

This prize was made possible by a generous grant from Progressive Insurance.

Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X CHALLENGE

Awarded October 2011

The $1.4 million Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X CHALLENGE is a competition designed to inspire a new generation of innovative solutions that will speed the pace of cleaning up seawater surface oil resulting from spillage from ocean platforms, tankers, and other sources. This X CHALLENGE began on August 1, 2010 and culminates this summer with head-to-head competitive demonstrations. A $1 million prize will be awarded to the team that demonstrates the ability to recover oil on the sea surface at the highest Oil Recovery Rate (ORR) and the highest Oil Recovery Efficiency (ORE). To learn more, click here.
This prize is made possible by a generous grant from Wendy Schmidt.

In Development

Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health X PRIZE

A healthy ocean is essential to a healthy planet. But our oceans are currently in the midst of a silent crisis. Rising levels of carbon are causing quiet, but catastrophic, changes in our oceans’ chemistry, which can only lead to our waters becoming unsustainable for the coral reefs and sea life that we depend upon for our very own survival. Monitoring and understanding this troubling problem is critical to solving it, but pH sensory technology that can affordably, accurately, and efficiently measure at the deepest depths does not yet exist. The Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health X PRIZE will be a $1.5 million competition that challenges individuals and teams around the world to build and demonstrate advanced pH sensor technology that will allow us to stem the tide of this chemical imbalance, and return our oceans and sea life to a state of prolonged health.

Village Utility X PRIZE

Nearly one billion people lack access to safe drinking water and 2.6 billion lack access to basic sanitation. As a result, half of the world’s hospitalizations are due to drinking water contaminated with infectious agents, toxic chemicals, and radiological hazards. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), just one of those infectious agents - the bacteria that causes diarrhea - accounts for 4.1 percent of the global disease burden, killing 1.8 million children a year. There is a radical high tech solution to solve all this.  There is more than one mega-joule per day of energy in human feces, which is enough energy to purify drinking water out of urine and organic waste, convert the remaining waste to ash, and even power a few lights and recharge your cell phone. The upside of this “Village Utility” is almost incalculable. For starters, removing human feces from the equation solves an enormous portion of the global disease burden (which also slows population growth). Doing so in a way that is distributed and net-positive for water and power makes this technology radically disruptive.

Tri-State Carbon X PRIZE

We recycle aluminum, glass, paper, plastic, and yard waste - why not carbon? As of now, no company has successfully commercialized a carbon utilization technology. Current funding has been focused on expensive carbon capture and sequestration, which treats carbon as a liability. A carbon capture and recycling competition challenges teams to create useful and valuable products from the coal plant effluent. The goal is to develop radical new technologies and products that make capturing CO2 from coal plants a profit center, not a liability.

Autonomous Auto X PRIZE

There are more than 1.2 million automotive-related deaths each year worldwide. Roughly 400,000 of these fatalities involve people under age 25. In 2002, traffic injuries were the third leading cause of death for children ages 5 to 9, behind pneumonia and AIDS. The financial cost of these accidents is more than $230 billion in the U.S. alone or approximately 8¢ per mile - more than the cost of gasoline for an efficient vehicle. An autonomous vehicle can dramatically increase automotive safety, reduce commuting time, and greatly reduce fuel consumption. Following DARPA’s successful “Grand Challenge” and “Urban Challenge,” this competition is focused on bringing this technology into the consumer marketplace and changing the paradigm about the safety of autonomous cars.

Plastics X PRIZE

Nearly 80 percent of the 450 billion pounds of plastic produced annually is not recycled. Instead, it is deposited into landfills or travels to the ocean, where it accumulates in a gyre of marine litter sometimes called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Marine plastic pollution is growing at a rate of 11 billion pounds each year. Plastic pollution also degrades slower in a marine environment because of the reduced exposure to UV rays and cooler temperatures. Mistaking plastic for food, marine life ingests this toxic material, which can then move through the food chain and can potentially harm humans. Oceanic plastic pollution also presents threats to coastal communities and the tourism, shipping, and fishing industries. Regulation, taxation, and banning of specific plastic products are not enough to further prevent plastic from entering the ocean or address the fact that marine plastic pollution will remain in our oceans for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

Concepts Under Consideration

Electric Aircraft X PRIZE

A new class of all-electric aircraft would help minimize our dependence on fossil fuels. The development of faster and more capable aircraft was initially incentivized annual races held during the 1920s and 1930s. The goal of this X PRIZE is to incent a new generation of fast, safe, long-endurance, electric aircraft that will reduce noise pollution and dependence on fossil fuels.

ePOD Home Energy Storage X PRIZE

Most utility companies are paid for the amount of power they sell and are provided little incentive for improvements in efficiency. A home-based energy storage system (i.e. an ePod) that is able to buy energy from grid when it is cheap (off-peak) and supply it for household needs when electricity is expensive can lower peak energy demand, lessen pollution, and increase access to renewable power generation. The device will also create greater resiliency to blackouts and brownouts.

Featherweight Solar & Wind Power X PRIZE

(1) Most solar photovoltaic improvements focus on incremental gains in panel efficiency, not materials or process improvements to reduce weight and therefore cost of production and installation. (2) Despite the availability of wind, less than two percent of total world power needs are currently met by power generated from wind turbines. Breakthroughs in ultra-lightweight wind turbines would mean reduced costs, increased production rates, and increased ease of installation.

Solar Pavement X PRIZE

Although pavement covers nearly three percent of the land area, it provides little benefit other than surface structure. A significant impact could be achieved if pavement also could produce power. The goal of the solar pavement competition is to turn blacktop surfaces into photovoltaic power generation sources.

1,000 Household Energy X PRIZE

The majority of energy today is used to heat and cool buildings, yet most people do not take the time to insulate their homes, seal their windows or even know if their homes need further insulation. Similarly, tremendous steps can be taken to reduce electricity consumption at the household level. There are countless improvements that could be made if consumers were sufficiently aware and incentivized.

Battery X PRIZE

The best batteries currently offer energy storage densities of 100s of Wh/kg, more than two orders of magnitude below that of liquid fuels. With breakthroughs in higher energy density, lightweight batteries will enable a revolution in electric aircraft, surface vehicles, and robotic applications.

Super Battery X PRIZE

High energy-density storage has the potential to revolutionize the electric car industry, enable electric aircraft, and have widespread application in mobile consumer electronics devices, such as phones and computers.  The Super Battery X PRIZE is designed to improve energy density through an energy storage device that is 10 times better than present-day commercial batteries used in mobile applications.

Energy Scavenging X PRIZE

The Internet has made it possible to network a multitude of devices. However, challenges remain in finding affordable and convenient mechanisms to power small wireless electronic devices/sensors over long periods of time in remote locations (e.g. temperature sensors embedded in the walls of buildings). Fuel storage systems and traditional electrochemical batteries are limited by factors such as fuel supply, battery life, and weight. The ability to leverage small energy fluxes from temperature, pressure, vibration, light, and radio waves in the environment could hold promise for providing mobility, flexibility, and energy efficiency. The purpose of this prize is to bring about a new mechanism for powering countless small, remotely-located sensors over long periods of time from ambient power in the environment.

Sustainable Apparel X PRIZE

Throughout the lifecycle of an article of apparel, opportunities exist to reduce the human or environmental health impacts of the process. Because the apparel industry is so large and touches every inch of the globe, addressing any of the major sources of negative human or environmental externalities would be a win for human and environmental health. First, most fibers and fabrics used in apparel manufacturing have some associated negative environmental impacts. For example, nylon and polyester are made from petrochemicals and are non-biodegradable. Second, the manufacturing processes - going from fiber to cloth - also has large environmental impacts from a water and energy use and pollution standpoint. Dyeing alone can account for most of the water used in producing a garment with unfixed dye then often washing out of garments and, if untreated, polluting rivers and streams. Third, the environmental impacts do not stop at the manufacturing plant. Packaging and transportation have negative environmental impacts, as does the long term care of products, and the disposal of used apparel. A study conducted for the American Fiber Manufacturers Association showed that in the lifespan of a woman’s blouse - from production to use to disposal - approximately 80 percent of the total system energy is energy used for laundering the blouses.

Wireless Power Transmission X PRIZE

The goal of this prize is to create radical breakthroughs in wireless transmission technologies that will transform the way we collect and distribute energy, dramatically increase the availability of affordable carbon-free energy, and reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. Innovations in this area will expand the supply of clean energy, remove the need for land dedicated to traditional transmission lines, and positively impact global climate change.

======================================================X PRIZE Labs currently has teaching and research activities at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Washington, and the University of Southern California. The labs provide a platform to educate university students and faculty around the emerging field of prize theory.

The goal of X PRIZE Labs is to engage the next generation of leading thinkers in recognizing areas that are ripe for breakthrough innovation. Interdisciplinary students explore the strengths of prize philanthropy with academic rigor, using the excitement of the X PRIZE model as an anchor for engaging them in the world’s biggest challenges.

Through the X PRIZE Labs, graduate students participate in a semester-long lab researching and dissecting the prize philanthropy model. The students produce concepts for new X PRIZE competitions in one of four prize groups: Education & Global Development; Energy & Environment; Exploration; and Life Sciences. At the end of the semester, students present their ideas to senior Foundation leadership and members of the X PRIZE Foundation’s Board of Trustees.

Research ventures at the labs examine the role of prizes in corporate, philanthropic and government circles, and use competitions as a natural laboratory to study the processes of innovation.

Hear Dr. Peter Diamandis talk about the X PRIZE Lab @ MIT

	The X PRIZE Lab @ MIT was founded in 2007. Since its inception, the lab has developed concepts for future X PRIZE competitions for Tuberculosis Diagnostics, Bionic X Legs, and Clean Aviation. "The X PRIZE Lab @ MIT is unlike another other class on the planet. It allows, and encourages, you to throw convention out the window in pursuit of solutions to the grand challenges of the world." - Justin Butler, Graduate Student MIT Sloan School of Management
	The X PRIZE Lab @ USC was founded in 2010. The lab recently developed an X PRIZE competition to revolutionize solar power. Two teams of students developed competitions to efficiently deploy solar power in both small and large scales.
	The X PRIZE Lab @ UW was founded in 2010. Their most recent lab was focused on water conservation. The goal of the lab was to develop a system which could address the many issues the United States with its water supplies, with focuses on water stressed areas such as the Southwest. "The X PRIZE Lab @ UW has been an amazing opportunity to combine my creative inclinations with academic pursuits and environmental passions!" -Chris LaRoche, Graduate Student UW Evans School of Public Affairs

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Each year, the X PRIZE Foundation gathers with its Board of Trustees and thought leaders from around the world to discover, debate and brainstorm solutions to the world’s “Grand Challenges” through incentive prize competitions.

Visioneers Compete to Create the Next X PRIZE

These “Visioneers” convene with one audacious goal in mind: to design prize competitions that will bring about radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity. Teams compete with one another to design and pitch innovative incentivized prize concepts across themes of Education, Energy & Environment, Exploration, Global Development, and Life Sciences in the hopes that theirs will become the next X PRIZE launched. The most recent Visioneering prize concept to be fully realized was the $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE.

Congratulations to This Year’s Winner and Finalists

This year, the top 2012 prize concepts were presented at the Visioneering Results Dinner, in association with Barclays. Voting was lead by Ali Velshi and the winner was determined by the enthusiastic, foot-stomping applause of the crowd.

The final five:

• Empowering the Unpowered (affordable, rural, on-demand energy)
• Sydney By Lunch (high-speed, low-carbon travel from NY to Sydney in less than 2 hours)
• Brain Dashboard (non-invasive, affordable brain health monitor)
• Ed-u-Phone (achieving literacy on a mass scale, sustainably, by tapping into a universal desire for mobile technology)
• Motion of the Ocean (portable, affordable desalination device powered by wave and tidal energy)

Ed-u-Phone took top honors, created by Eric Hirshberg, Anousheh Ansari, Lawrence Aldridge, Atul Jain, and Frank Sullivan.

Experience the Thrill of Visioneering

Have a look at our photo gallery to see what all the excitement was about. And contact us for more information on how you can participate in the X PRIZE mission of truly making the impossible, possible.

Interested in participating next year as a sponsor or attendee? >...

Learn about Visioneering 2011 >>

Watch Ali Velshi's CNN segment about Visioneering >>

[chris macrae]

http://www.nokiasensingxchallenge.org/competition-details/overview

Overview

THE CHALLENGE: TRANSFORMING PERSONAL HEALTH WITH SENSING

The Nokia Sensing X CHALLENGE is a $2.25 million global competition to accelerate the availability of hardware sensors and software sensing technology that individuals use to access, understand, and improve their health and well-being. Innovation in sensing is an important component to creating a means for appealing, usable, smarter digital health solutions.

The Nokia Sensing X CHALLENGE will be comprised of two distinct Challenges held between 2013 and 2014. Prize purses totaling $2.25 million will be awarded.  View Competition Schedule.

THE NEED FOR THE PRIZE

Traditional laboratory tests, hospital equipment, and a limited number of machines in a doctor’s office are the primary means to get information about a person’s health today. In many countries around the world these mechanisms are in short supply; even in developed countries it is difficult to come by access to healthcare that is timely, convenient, cost effective and reliable.

Yet capturing body metrics and interpreting these readings into valuable insights about detection, assessment, treatment and management of health conditions is very possible. Sensing can be used as a faster, cheaper, easier means to get information that has been limited up to now by the capabilities of conventional testing. Improved test methods and radical new alternatives to blood testing, heart monitoring, imaging, are on the near horizon.

Readings from sensors can be used in many facets of health: to track the spread of disease, monitor our exposure to environmental factors, assess our mental state, and give us a complete picture of our state of being. Continuous monitoring through sensing can provide real-time readings as they happen and give us ongoing insight instead of just single point-in-time measurement.  Software algorithms as well have the needed brain power to make perfect sense of mountains of data, revealing patterns of sickness and wellness never seen before. Some examples of sensing include:

• Speed the detection of cancer through the use of a highly sensitive electronic nose that detects the presence of early tumors and abnormal cell growth.
• Assess potential life-altering conditions with an ECG heart monitor connected to a mobile phone, making critical information instantly available to individuals and their healthcare providers.
• Discover patterns of behavior in an individual’s physical motion that predict the emergence of a disease or medical condition long before it presents itself.
• Reliably predict a woman’s fertility with a continuous, portable sensor that measures very subtle changes in body temperature, replacing the costly and invasive methods used today
• In a single exhaled breath collect the diagnostic markers for a range of diseases including asthma, diabetes, kidney disease, lung cancer and stomach ulcers.
• By scanning the inner eye measure the likelihood of stroke as part of a general retinopathy assessment that can indicate the presence of many other diseases.

Leading edge companies, startups and incubator labs are on the forefront of creating and building these new, innovative sensing technologies. What is needed is a pathway and compelling impetus to launch these discoveries into the realm of actual availability for all.

The Nokia Sensing X CHALLENGE is focused on the following aspects of health sensor and sensing technologies:

• Technology:
  • Sensing mode: Driving advances in technology such as microelectrical mechanical systems (MEMS), imaging, and microfluidic and nanofluidic lab-on-a-chip systems can lead the way to new forms of chemical, optical, thermal, electrical, biological, and genomic sensing and analysis available anytime, anywhere.
  • Cost and size: Pushing advances in electronics and computing can make many forms of sensing more widely accessible to individuals in their home, work and living spaces.
  • Interlinking: Driving sensors to interface more with other devices as well as the cloud, enabling both convenience and ubiquitous real-time sensing. This is also key to integrating health data with consumer social networks, another powerful dimension that can be deployed to improve health and well-being through peer support.
  • Resource scarcity: Improving the computing, communications and energy resources of sensors and sensing solutions.
  • Computing and machine learning algorithms: Pushing the development of sophisticated software that can enable complex conditions—such as depression or addiction—to be inferred from data. Software has the capability to interpret data from sensors or other existing sources of information and capture insight about the human organism.
• Trustworthiness: Extending end-to-end system reliability and quality of data and data delivery, both in terms of sensor and network functionality as well as user actions.
• Privacy and Security: Proactively addressing data privacy, both in terms of how information is being gathered and evaluated, and by whom and when.
• Regulations, standardization and interoperability: Establishing a forum and dialogue for convening industry standards to address these issues.