Mountain View, CA (August 27, 2014) — Singularity University (SU), the Silicon Valley educational institute and business accelerator, completed its sixth Global Solutions Program (GSP) last week and paid tribute at the Closing Ceremony to the 80 participants and showcased the 21 Team Projects developed within the 10-week program that employ accelerating technologies to address global grand challenges.
The 80 participants, who hailed from 35 different countries worldwide, were immersed on the SU campus at NASA Research Park in an unparalleled learning environment focused on identifying and using rapidly accelerating technologies to find solutions to humanity’s greatest challenges: Education, Energy, Environment, Food, Global Health, Poverty, Security, Space and Water. Each year, SU challenges GSP participants to design a sustainable solution to one or more of these “Global Grand Challenges,” leveraging exponential trends, innovation and the power of entrepreneurship to positively impact more than one billion people.
The 21 Team Projects ranged from the use of AI to enhance literacy and learning to biotech solutions to improve health and wellness to new solutions for renewable energy and poverty eradication. Five teams were showcased during the Closing Ceremony for developing unique solutions to challenges in Education, Energy, Global Health, Poverty and Security. All 21 GSP Team Project videos can be viewed on the Singularity University website.
Team: Besense
Grand Challenge:Global Health
Goal: Creating smart and simple to use solutions that empower women with actionable insights about their health.
Project: Develop a revolutionary smart-pad built to measure selected biomarkers in menstrual blood to discover, diagnose and provide valuable insights to the health of women.
Team Nations: Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Denmark, Poland
Team:Bibak
Grand Challenge: Education, Environment, Security
Goal: Bibak’s “podtector” is a landmine detector that is effective, cheap and can be assembled on-site. It is delivered in a way that is sustainable, coordinated and community-led.
Project: Bibak’s “podtector” is a landmine detector that is effective, cheap and can be assembled on-site. It is delivered in a way that is sustainable, coordinated and community-led.
Team Nations: Australia, Italy, Peru
Team: Mitera
Grand Challenge: Global Health
Goal: Reduce disease by revolutionizing healthcare with personalized, precise and democratized early diagnostics
Project: A device that allows early disease detection through weekly, in-home saliva analysis using nanotechnology. Through collection of continuous, non-invasive health data, the team’s solution can identify undiscovered biomarkers of disease, monitor changes over time and create a deeper understanding of the human body.
Team Nations: Germany, Italy, UK, USA
Team: Peared
Grand Challenge: Health, Security
Goal: Empower seniors to live their lives fully
Project: A lifestyle company for seniors. Peared’s first product is “Bridgey” a smart earpiece designed to enhance hearing, monitor health and boost memory by providing every day contextual information.
Team Nations: Australia, Austria, Brazil, France
Team: Tridom
Grand Challenge: Poverty, Energy
Goal: Solve the housing crisis for the estimated 4 billion people who will be in need of affordable and adequate housing
Project: A retrofit kit and work tool for cranes and transform any crane in the world into an automated tool for printing multi store buildings, that would function as houses and small businesses. The crane will handle 80% of the movement and precision and the kit would handle 20%. Also, the cranes could be mobile or static ones, preferably hydraulic.
Team Nations: Brazil, Israel
“We are extremely proud of this year’s 2014 graduate studies class for turning big ideas into practical solutions, with a number of breakthrough innovations and working prototypes”, said Nicholas Haan, Director of Global Grand Challenges and Team Project Leader.
About SU Global Solutions Program (GSP)
Each summer, Singularity University convenes future leaders, entrepreneurs and technologists from around the world for its Global Solutions Program (GSP) , a 10-week collaborative experience to develop team-based technology solutions to widespread global challenges. Participants apply directly or are invited to attend by competing and winning SU’s Global Impact Competitions (GIC), which act as a global platform to identify outstanding applicants with the most innovative ideas for positively impacting millions of lives.
About Singularity University (SU)
Singularity University (SU) is a benefit corporation headquartered at NASA Research Park in Silicon Valley. SU provides educational programs, innovative partnerships and a startup accelerator to help individuals, businesses, institutions, investors, NGOs and governments understand cutting-edge technologies and how to utilize these technologies to positively impact billions of people. From its inception in 2008, SU has empowered individuals from more than 85 countries to apply exponentially growing technologies—artificial intelligence & robotics, biotechnology, nanotechnology & digital fabrication, networks & computing systems and medicine & neuroscience—to address humanity’s grand challenges: education, energy, environment, food, global health, poverty, security, space and water.
To learn more, visit singularityu.org.
Media Contact & RSVP:
Diane Murphy (diane@singularityu.org); T. +1.202.361.9681.