Education & Global Development Prize Group

In Development

Micronutrients X PRIZE

A staggering two billion people suffer from micronutrient deficiency—a lack of crucial vitamins and minerals that prevent brain damage, enhance neural development, and forestall disease. The Micronutrients X PRIZE will be awarded to the team that develops the supplementation and fortification methods to durably bind micronutrients such as iron to flour and/or staple foods. As a result of this prize, we can help save millions of lives and achieve hundreds of billions of dollars of economic impact.

Tuberculosis Diagnostics X PRIZE

The Tuberculosis Diagnostics X PRIZE is a competition to create a set of rapid, accurate, and easy-to-use, point-of-care diagnostics to eradicate tuberculosis in developing countries. Nearly two million deaths occur annually in 22 tuberculosis high-incident developing countries. The TB Diagnostics X PRIZE can help ensure that every TB patient has access to effective diagnosis, treatment, and cure, which will reduce the inequitable social and economic toll of TB.

Cookstoves X CHALLENGE

Each year nearly two million people die from utilizing ‘cook-stoves’ that incompletely burn their fuel, resulting in soot and carbon monoxide poisoning for the women and children in the home. Over two billion people globally use biomass cookstoves that often require hours of gathering sticks and other fuel. This competition will spur the development and adoption of an inexpensive non-toxic and efficient cook-stove that will help eliminate deaths caused by cook-stoves in the developing world.

Neurometrics Learning X CHALLENGE

The Neurometrics Learning X CHALLENGE is a competition to create a low cost, sufficiently accurate, and scalable method for measuring the way in which an individual learns best. The winning team will develop a method for measuring the Brain Learning Processes (i.e. attention, memory, processing speed, prediction, executive function, spatial skills etc.) that display the highest correlation to educational outcomes.

Concepts Under Consideration

2G Mobile Phone Education

It is estimated that more than 80% of the world will have access to 2G phones by 2013. This will offer a strong distribution platform for educational material, yet no mobile company has taken on the challenge of developing the software. The winning team of the 2G Mobile Phone Education competition must create a cell phone based “Education Program” that is easy to use by anyone with a 2G cell phone (text and voice). The system should use voice for delivering lessons or lectures and text for questions and testing. Educational content should include basic subjects such as literacy, agriculture, healthcare, and infant care, as well as education relating to the region of the world in which the technology is deployed.

African Entrepreneurship

This competition is designed to address the current poverty crisis in Africa through entrepreneurial job creation in areas that will both stimulate the economy and increase the standard of living throughout the continent. Entrepreneurship is critical to economic development, according to the UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development). While sound macroeconomic policies and providing market access are crucial, emerging markets need to nurture and develop entrepreneurs. The goal is to inspire African universities, companies, and incubators to generate in-country entrepreneurs and new jobs. Competing teams will consist of a variety of organizations, both academic and corporate, that will recruit and train entrepreneurs and incubate the new companies started by those entrepreneurs. The winning team will be the organization whose African-based ethical and socially beneficial companies employ the most qualified employees over a five year period.

Democracy

In a world of relatively secure ATMs that can handle complex transactions, blood is shed and nations are upended in disputes over the simple counting of votes. Providing a clean vote counting technology will be one step towards a solution. The winning team of the Democracy competition must create a digital voting system which is highly scalable, confidential, and accurate and allows each voter to know that their vote was correctly counted. Teams will implement their voting system in a population of 10,000 voters and make 10 democratic decisions using the system. During the 10 test votes, users must be able to verify that their vote was counted correctly, but votes must be kept confidential (except to the user). The system must also allow a voter whose vote has not been counted correctly to prove that fact to a third party monitoring agency.

Education Ecosystem

Today’s educational system is more than 100 years old, designed to meet our agrarian society. The Education competition could be the catalyst of a bold, measurable, and scientific system reinvention. Demonstration of a new approach causing a dramatic change can lead to national and global publicity and the adoption of the teach approach/technology by schools around the nation and/or world. Teams competing in an Education competition will be composed of a school system (middle or high school) and their corporate partner. Each team must choose a single grade (e.g. 7th, 8th, 9th grade) as their “test grade” and submit the standardized test results for all students from that grade over the past three years (baseline years). The teams will then begin a test period during which they will develop and implement a specified educational approach on the entire grade of their choosing, while maintaining the pre-existing annual budget from the previous baseline years. The team that demonstrates the largest percentage increase in test scores over the test period will be deemed the winner of the competition.

Individual Learning Profiles

Different people learn in different ways. Some learn by reading, others by listening, some are visual, some best by storytelling. Understanding how a person best learns can help them in their education. There are current mechanisms to evaluate a person’s learning profile, but these are expensive. The goal of this competition is to create a low-cost, easy to use, correct, and consistent on-line mechanism that evaluates a user’s learning profile and provides a standard report.

Mobile Phone Application

It is estimated that more than 8o% of the world will have access to a mobile telephone by 2013. The use of this technology for many applications, including revenue generation, is greatly anticipated. This competition would help to establish a new source of revenue for individuals in the developing world and institute a revolutionary form of entrepreneurship. The goal is to create a mobile application that would allow 250,000 people to earn $2 a day for a minimum of 100 days per year.

On-Line Tutor

While there are many small start-ups developing software in this arena, there is no way to compare them, and therefore it is difficult for the software to gain visibility and approval in the marketplace.

Teams competing in the On-Line Tutor competition must develop an automated “on-line tutor” system that improves the performance of students in one of three disciplines: Math, Science, or English.

Rapid Low Cost Housing

Inadequate housing affects more than one billion people on the planet. A new mechanism to rapidly build durable, low-cost housing for less than $3,000 dollars per house would be revolutionary. The winning team must demonstrate the ability to construct a home of at least 1,000 sq. ft. in a period of less than 12 hours, while using 95% locally available materials.

Salt Water Crops

More than 70% of the Earth’s surface is salt water. In order for humans to thrive and produce enough food, it will be imperative for us to look to our oceans for sustainable food sources. A Salt Water Crops competition will encourage teams to develop a food crop that can grow and thrive in brackish waters. The winner will be the first team to plant and grow one acre of a food crop of their choice and have it thrive through two growth cycles in a specified salt water concentration.

Waste to Energy

Though sanitation is the bedrock of public health, sewer systems currently only reach a tiny percentage of humanity. A Waste to Energy competition could rapidly scale sewer systems into the developing world that both decrease the amount of waste that is entering the public water systems, as well as utilize the waste for purposes that can benefit the population of the region (i.e. energy and fertilizer).

Teams competing will design and develop a public restroom and waste processing facility that is able to accommodate 1,000 individuals per day. The system would need to process 100% of human solid and liquid waste into three products: energy, usable fertilizer, or inert waste (not harmful to water or environment). The system would need to operate for one year continuously with no more than 10% down time, and be proven to be profitable on a cash-flow basis within the one year trial period.