LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--XPRIZE, the global leader in incentivized prize competitions, today announced that nine international teams have been selected to design the next generation of potential XPRIZEs. These teams of “Visioneers” are comprised of bold innovators, prominent scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs who are passionate about creating exponential impact across a portfolio of grand challenge areas: cancer, ALS, empathy, water, nutrition, housing, and avatars. At the Visioneers Summit 2016, presented by The Roddenberry Foundation, teams will present their prize concepts, in the form of XPRIZE Impact Design Proposals, to over 200 of the world’s leading CEOs, technology innovators, political leaders, entrepreneurs, and philanthropists. Collectively, this audience of mentors will evaluate, critique, and ultimately determine which team’s concept(s) will be selected as the next global XPRIZE competition.
“Today small teams of entrepreneurs, empowered by exponential technologies, can do what was once only possible by governments and large corporations,” said Peter H. Diamandis, executive chairman and founder of XPRIZE. “The Visioneers Summit challenges these exponential entrepreneurs to solve grand challenges, and leverage both technology and the crowd to drive global impact.”
The Visioneering process leading up to the Visioneers Summit 2016 is a key part of XPRIZE’s broader multi-phase approach and strategy to drive impact leveraging crowdsourcing and incentive competition models.
“XPRIZE has grown into the world’s most renowned crowdsourcing organization harnessing the genius of the crowd to solve humanity’s grand challenges through incentivized competition,” said Marcus Shingles, CEO of XPRIZE. “With this new model we are gamifying our own internal prize evaluation process by having nine talented teams share their proposals for how they would craft an XPRIZE to solve the grand challenges that they are passionate about. Through this collaborative process, XPRIZE’s prominent ecosystem will provide feedback, mentorship, and critique, to ultimately select and determine the next XPRIZE.”
The following nine Visioneers teams will present at this fall’s Visioneers Summit:
Limitless
Travel Avatar XPRIZE, sponsored by ANA
Led by Dr.
Harry Kloor, Ph.D, Ph.D, the Avatar Visioneers Team is focused on
creating “limitless travel” by teleporting one's consciousness into a
physical Avatar body that will enable people to “instantly be in
multiple places at once, literally.” Kloor is an American scientist,
film producer, director, writer and entrepreneur, with experience in
robotics, augmented reality, virtual reality, haptic technologies,
machine-brain technologies and telepresence.
Affordable
Housing XPRIZE, sponsored by Bosa Properties with Leonard
Brody
Led by Yaron Schwarcz, the Affordable Housing Visioneers
Team is focused on “ensuring everyone has direct access to acceptable
and affordable housing,” with the goal of “sparking exponential leaps in
construction technologies, speed and safety – ultimately decreasing both
the time and cost it takes to make affordable housing available.”
Schwarcz, founder and CEO of Tridom: Robotic Construction, is a
consultant and thought leader for innovation and accelerating
technologies.
Safe
Drinking Water XPRIZE, sponsored by Brita®
Led by
William Sarni, the Safe Drinking Water Visioneers Team, is focused on
“democratizing access to safe drinking water and data” with the goal of
providing “universal access to safe drinking water, always.” Sarni, a
managing director at Deloitte Consulting LLP, is an internationally
recognized thought leader on water strategy and water technology
innovation.
Cat’s
Iron Will ALS XPRIZE, sponsored by Caterpillar
Led
by Dr. Melanie Leitner, the ALS Visioneers Team is focused on “removing
ALS patients from death row” by improving quality of life for those
fighting the disease, thus building a bridge to treatments and
eventually a cure. Through the development of novel assistive
technologies, the ALS Team envisions a world where ALS is no longer a
death sentence or even a prison, but where ALS patients can live their
lives independently. Dr. Leitner, founder of Accelerating NeuroVentures,
is a consultant who advises companies, foundations, and investors
interested in translating neuroscience discoveries into breakthroughs
for patients.
Conquering
Cancer XPRIZE, sponsored by Deloitte
Led by Dr.
Daniel Kraft and Deloitte, the Conquering Cancer Visioneers Team is
focused on “conquering cancer,” with the goal of “eliminating
preventable cancer deaths.” Dr. Kraft is a Stanford and Harvard trained
physician-scientist, inventor, entrepreneur and innovator, who is also
the founder and executive director of Exponential Medicine, a program
that explores convergent, rapidly developing technologies and their
potential in biomedicine and health care. Deloitte brings its full
arsenal of tools, alliances and in-depth knowledge of the health care
ecosystem to accelerate existing initiatives and uncover unexpected
insights to conquering cancer.
Healthy
& Safe Homes XPRIZE, sponsored by Lowe’s
Led
by architect Eric Corey Freed, the Healthy & Safe Homes Visioneers Team
is focused on disrupting traditional toxic construction methods with the
goal of “growing living and adaptable buildings that make us well.”
Freed has dedicated his career to fostering sustainable, healthy
buildings and is author of 11 books. He is also a frequent guest
commentator on CNN, FoxNews, PBS and HGTV.
Nutritious
Abundance XPRIZE, sponsored by the Nutritious Abundance
Collaborative
Led by Ignacio Peña, the Nutritious Abundance
Visioneers Team is focused on “access to a healthy diet for all” with
the goal of “developing sustainable solutions that offer our expanding
population access to affordable and freshly grown nutritious food.” Peña
is a social entrepreneur, innovator and strategist trained at
Wharton-Lauder who is dedicated to catalyzing abundance, inclusion and
regeneration through high impact ideas, initiatives and startups. He was
partner and managing director at The Boston Consulting Group and his
passion for creating an abundance of fresh, natural food grew out of his
work with food banks and schools.
Desalination
XPRIZE, sponsored by National Research Foundation Singapore
Led
by Alisa Ferguson, the Desalination Visioneers Team is focused on
“bringing water abundance to communities around the globe,” with the
goal of “making the world’s water sources accessible and sustainable—for
human development, economic growth, and the health and biodiversity of
the planet.” Ferguson has spent more than 15 years working at the
intersection of technology, business and policy to force strategies that
accelerate innovation.
Experiential
Empathy XPRIZE, sponsored by The Roddenberry Foundation
The
Empathy Visioneers Team is focusing on “experiential empathy” and will
challenge teams to develop innovative technologies for teaching empathy
and compassion and scaling the untapped and exponentially unifying power
of human empathy and compassion to address global challenges. Supported
by Dr. Dan Cordaro, Dr. Alexandra Ivanovitch, and Fuji Lai, the team is
exploring ways to leverage exponential technologies to democratize the
teaching and learning of empathy and compassion, critical skills in our
increasingly connected and yet divided world.
For more information about Visioneers, visit http://www.xprize.org/visioneers.
About XPRIZE
XPRIZE, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is the global
leader in designing and implementing innovative competition models to
solve the world’s grandest challenges. XPRIZE utilizes a unique
combination of gamification, crowd-sourcing, incentive prize theory, and
exponential technologies as a formula to make 10x (vs. 10%) impact in
the grand challenge domains facing our world. XPRIZE’s philosophy is
that—under the right circumstances— igniting rapid experimentation from
a variety of diverse lenses is the most efficient and effective method
to driving exponential impact and solutions to grand challenges. Active
competitions include the $30M Google Lunar XPRIZE, the $20M NRG COSIA
Carbon XPRIZE, the $15M Global Learning XPRIZE, the $10M Qualcomm
Tricorder XPRIZE, the $7M Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE, the $7M Adult
Literacy XPRIZE, the $7M Barbara Bush Foundation Adult Literacy XPRIZE
and the $5M IBM Watson AI XPRIZE. For more information, visit www.xprize.org.
About The Roddenberry Foundation
The Roddenberry Foundation
supports and inspires efforts that create and expand new frontiers for
the benefit of humanity. It funds innovative solutions to critical
global issues in the areas of science and technology, the environment,
education and humanitarian advances. In celebration of the 50 years of
impact on the world that Star Trek has had, we are committed to
advancing Gene Roddenberry’s faith in humanity by finding and supporting
remarkable people and organizations who can disrupt existing dynamics,
challenge old patterns of thought, and discover new ways to help us move
towards a better future. For more information, visit www.roddenberryfoundation.org.