Healing the Planet Accelerator: Radical Progress is meant to accelerate the work of innovators out there who are ready to tackle climate and ecosystem destabilization on a radical, systemic, large-scale basis—to propose relevant solutions that match the order of magnitude of the challenge. Whether your project is research-oriented or your strategy relies on generating profit to drive progress—if you are ready to tackle what is perhaps the greatest challenge humanity has faced so far, we will accelerate you.
In this 4-week accelerator, accepted teams will compete with a scientific or technological proposal that, if implemented, would solve a crucial aspect of our planet’s climate and ecosystem challenges. Rather than predictable incremental advances, this accelerator focuses on proposals that are high-risk high-reward, in the sense that they are founded on fundamentally novel ideas or combine existing science and tech in novel ways.
From October 4-25, as your schedule permits, we will schedule personal online sessions with our listed mentors whose advice will help your project become technically sound, effective to address the scale of the problem, well-placed in the global institutional context, and attractive to fund and execute.
Each week is concluded by each team giving a short interim presentation and feedback from your accelerator cohort to integrate this week’s learning and prepare for the final presentations on Sunday, October 25, 10 am-12 pm PDT. A judging committee will evaluate the final project presentations and award the Prizes and Prize money ($5,000 – 1st place, $2,500 – 2nd place, and $1,000 – 3rd place) to the winning teams of the accelerator.
Rather than a full-time program, this accelerator is a supportive project, with each team committing a minimum of 5 flexible hours per week, designed to accommodate existing academia and work schedules.
Projects are welcome to apply at any stage, from initial visionary concepts to fully-developed ideas which have already received substantial support but deserve much more. Whether your idea is academia-affiliated, independent research, or is housed within a for-profit company, as long as it is ambitious and can benefit from our support, we will consider your application. We cast a wide net; examples of application areas would include methods to remove CO2 from Earth’s atmosphere, new clean energy proposals, and ways to radically improve the sustainability of industries, agriculture or ecosystems. Your application should state why the area you choose to focus on in the way you do has radical potential for healing the planet.
Binghamton University, State University of New York
Cronin Laboratory, University of Glasgow
This accelerator is an iteration of our annual technical competitions, in which multi-disciplinary teams of world-class scientists and engineers compete to generate project proposals that use foundational research to solve crucial problems for humanity. This year, we take the next leap by accelerating existing project ideas into the execution stage.
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