Contests & Awards For A Better World
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Editing Contests & Awards For A Better World
Please list any contests, prizes, or awards that will help create a better, greener, more equitable world.
General
Build a Better Bulb for a $10 Million Prize (September 25, 2009) The L Prize, an Energy Department contest that will award up to $10 million to the first person or group to create a new energy-sipping version of the most popular type of light bulb used in America.
The X Prize Foundation is preparing to launch a new generation of X PRIZEs to address humanity's grand challenges. "We currently have new X PRIZEs in development in the areas of space, energy, medicine, education and the social arena. We intend to create radical breakthroughs in each of these fields, just as we did with personal spaceflight and the Ansari X PRIZE."
TED Prize "Each year we will honor a maximum of three individuals who have shown that they can, in some way, positively impact life on this planet...We are looking for inventors and entrepreneurs, designers and artists, visionaries and mavericks, protectors and persuaders....We are willing to spend -- in hard cash -- $100,000 on each winner. And our goal is to convert this into received value that is an order of magnitude greater."
The Purpose Prize awards $100,000 each to five innovators who are taking on society's biggest challenges. It's for those with the passion and experience to discover new opportunities, create new programs, and make lasting change. And because today, many of the best ideas for social change come from a source often overlooked: people over 60 -- this prize is for them.
NASA's Centennial Challenge prizes allow you to win cash and feel like a rocket scientist by designing things such as a better glove for space suits and various kinds of robots. You used to have to get a government contract to work with NASA, but with these prizes you just have to do good work!
Sustainable Ventures (SV) has continuous Prize Programs.
Aging
The Methuselah Mouse Prize is the premiere effort of The Methuselah Foundation; a scientific competition designed to draw attention to the ability of new technologies to slow and even reverse the damage of the aging process, preserving health and wisdom in a world that sorely needs it.
Agriculture
In Search of Test-tube Hamburger (Apr. 23, 2008) "On Monday, the clamorous animal rights group PETA announced it would award $1 million to the first person to come up with a way to make commercially viable in vitro meat by 2012. The fake meat would have to be indistinguishable from the real deal, according to competition rules, and it would have to be cheap enough to succeed in the marketplace." (From Time Magazine)
A new way to reward innovation in African agriculture: Cash prizes for the adoption of new technologies. William Masters and colleagues are building a novel approach to development assistance, through which donors could reward innovators proportionally to the social value of new technologies adopted by African farmers.
Alternative Energy
The Solar Decathlon brings together 18 teams of college and university students from around the globe to participate in an unparalleled solar competition to design, build, and operate the most attractive and energy-efficient solar-powered home.
Business
Shell Springboard is a programme that provides a financial boost to innovative, low carbon business ideas from across the UK. Successfully piloted in 2005, here's how it works: Up to 6 awards of between £20,000 and £40,000 are on offer in each of the 3 UK regions...read more on their website.
The first international private sector development research paper competition for 2005-2006 Business and Development: The Private Path to Prosperity The competition seeks to promote the best thinking on the role of business in development. Papers should add to the global discussion on private sector development and economic growth by providing new and innovative analyses, perspectives, or ideas. The target audience can be economic and financial policymakers, the international financial community, or international/domestic investors. Sponsored by the World Bank and the Financial Times.
InnoCentive is an exciting web-based community matching top scientists to relevant R&D challenges facing leading companies from around the globe. They provide a powerful online forum enabling major companies to reward scientific innovation through financial incentives
Communications
The Saatchi & Saatchi Award For World Changing Ideas -- The role of the Award is to uncover and spotlight innovations in communication that have the potential to change the world. So many ideas struggle to see the light of day. Our Award and the prize worth US$100,000 are designed to help overcome some of the difficulties.
The World Summit Award (WSA) is a global contest for selecting and promoting the World's best e-contents and applications. It sees the bridging of the Digital Divide and narrowing of the Content Gap as its overall goal and as of today - involves representatives from 168 countries on each continent.
Medical
ALS/MND Biomarker Challenge In November 2006, Prize4Life announced a two year $1 million ALS/MND Biomarker Challenge for the discovery of an ALS/MND biomarker that meets specific scientific criteria. ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, is a progressive fatal neurodegenerative illness that attacks motor neurons. When motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to control muscle movement is lost leading to paralysis. Unable to function, muscles atrophy. Eventually, all muscles under voluntary control are affected and patients in time lose their ability to walk, talk, swallow, and breathe. During this horrible process, the mind remains completely intact observing the loss of each function.
Open Source Science
If You Have a Problem, Ask Everyone (July 22, 2008) This article in the Science Times section of the NY Times describes a "huge shift in popular culture from consuming to participating...It is sometimes called open-source science." The article focuses mostly on the example of a company called InnoCentive that "links organizations (seekers) with problems (challenges) to people all over the world (solvers) who win cash prizes for resolving them." For example, a guy who knew how to keep cement from setting by vibrating it, solved the problem of how to keep oil from freezing in tanks in Alaska, and won $20,000 from the Oil Spill Recovery Institute for his idea. Very cool stuff.
Visit BOINC or Grid.org to donate your unused computer power to scientific research projects that help to cure diseases, study climate change and more. It's free, and it helps!
Fold It Gamers have devoted countless years of collective brainpower to rescuing princesses or protecting the planet against alien invasions. This week researchers at the University of Washington will try to harness those finely honed skills to make medical discoveries, perhaps even finding a cure for HIV. A new game, named Foldit, turns protein folding into a competitive sport. Introductory levels teach the rules, which are the same laws of physics by which protein strands curl and twist into three-dimensional shapes -- key for biological mysteries ranging from Alzheimer's to vaccines. (From Science Daily)
Firefly Watch combines an annual summer evening ritual with scientific research. Join a network of volunteers; observe your own backyard; track your progress online and interact with fellow Citizen Scientists; help scientists map fireflies found in New England and beyond; no specific scientific training required; participating in Firefly Watch requires just a fraction of your time.
Galaxy Zoo The public has been invited to help astronomers classify galaxies into simple categories based on visual inspection of digital images. This task is critical to understanding how galaxies form and evolve over eons. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is taking images of a large portion of the sky and will eventually find a million galaxies. With such a large number of galaxies, astronomers can finally begin to understand how they form and evolve by comparing various populations to each other with large enough numbers to draw real conclusions about their origin. Thousands of people have already begun to help inspect galaxy images and to classify them. You can help too! It's easy and fun!
Protecting Natural Resources
The International Smart Gear Competition Enter your design for smarter fishing gear and be eligible for the $25,000 grand prize, as well as help in bringing your design to market. "We're looking for practical, cost-effective solutions that reduce the incidental catch of sea turtles, cetaceans, fish bycatch and other non-target species in either fixed gear or nets."
Social Entrepreneurism
ChangeMakers.net Collaborative competitions 'open source' innovative, workable solutions to the world's most entrenched social problems. Competition entries are posted transparently online and available for anyone to view and collaborate with by providing new ideas, asking insightful questions, and providing connections to new resources. The collaboration provides the competitor information to be used in refining their entry until the entry deadline, meaning the earlier you apply the more you gain.
Introducing the Fast Company/Monitor Group Social Capitalist Award winners-- "25 entrepreneurs solving the world's toughest problems with creativity, ingenuity, and passion." Calvert Foundation (January 1, 2006) is the 2006 winner out of 125 organizations. It is a non-profit that serves individuals and institutions, seeking to finance affordable homes, fund small and micro businesses and to make available essential community services. It should not be confused with Calvert Group, Ltd. which is a for-profit business which operates socially responsible mutual funds.
Space / Nasa
http://www.spaceward.org/elevator2010 [Elevator:2010 - The Space Elevator Challenge] Our goal is to infect the engineering and science community with our passion for building the Space Elevator, thus making them ambassadors to our cause. As the fruits of their efforts take to the sky every year, we will have demonstrated the feasibility and sheer simplicity of the Space Elevator concept, and will have brought it closer to reality.
Our prize money is provided by NASA's Centennial Challenges program - a total of $4,000,000 over the next 5 years! To maximize our return and reduce our risk, we distribute the money in slowly increasing increments, as we ratchet up the difficulty level of the challenges.
Contests For Young People
The Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes Each year, the Barron Prize selects ten winners nationwide. Half of the winners have focused on helping their communities and fellow beings; half have focused on protecting the health and sustainability of the environment.
Future City Competition for teams of seventh and eight graders in the U.S. and involves designing a city using Simcity 3000 software, producing a physical model of a portion of the city and writing an essay. The competition is run by the National Engineers Week.
