Eric Emerson Schmidt is an American businessman and software engineer. He is known for being the CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011, executive chairman of Google from 2011 to 2015, executive chairman of Alphabet Inc. from 2015 to 2017, and Technical Advisor at Alphabet from 2017 to 2020. In 2017, Forbes ranked Schmidt as the 119th-richest person in the world, with an estimated wealth of US$11.1 billion.
The Ansari X Prize was a space competition in which the X Prize Foundation offered a US$10,000,000 prize for the first non-government organization to launch a reusable crewed spacecraft into space twice within two weeks. It was modeled after early 20th-century aviation prizes, and aimed to spur development of low-cost spaceflight.
The Centennial Challenges are NASA space competition inducement prize contests for non-government-funded technological achievements by American teams.
Peter H. Diamandis is a Greek American engineer, physician, and entrepreneur best known for being founder and chairman of the X Prize Foundation, cofounder and executive chairman of Singularity University and coauthor of The New York Times bestsellers Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think and BOLD: How to Go Big, Create Wealth, and Impact the World. He is former CEO and cofounder of the Zero Gravity Corporation, cofounder and vice chairman of Space Adventures Ltd., founder and chairman of the Rocket Racing League, cofounder of the International Space University, cofounder of Planetary Resources, cofounder of Celularity, founder of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space, vice chairman and cofounder of Human Longevity, Inc.
XPRIZE is a non-profit organization that designs and hosts public competitions intended to encourage technological development to benefit humanity. Their board of trustees include James Cameron, Larry Page, Arianna Huffington, and Ratan Tata among others.
The Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge (NG-LLC) was a competition funded by NASA's Centennial Challenges program. The competition offered a series of prizes for teams that launch a vertical takeoff/vertical landing (VTVL) rocket that achieved the total delta-v needed for a vehicle to move between the surface of the Moon and its orbit. The multi-level competition was conducted by the X PRIZE Foundation, with sponsorship from the Northrop Grumman Corporation who ran the ongoing competition. The prize purses were paid by NASA. It was held annually at the X PRIZE Cup, making its debut at the 2006 Wirefly X PRIZE Cup in October, 2006, until 2009 when the prize purse was awarded to Masten Space Systems and Armadillo Aerospace.
The X Prize Cup is a two-day air and space exposition which was the result of a partnership between the X Prize Foundation and the State of New Mexico that began in 2004 when the Ansari X-Prize was held. This led to plans to build the world's first true rocket festival. Three X-Prize Cups have been held: in 2005, 2006 and 2007. Each X Prize Cup hosts different events and demonstrations, such as rocket-powered bicycles, rocket jet packs; but particularly notable are the Lunar Lander Challenge and the Space Elevator Games. 85,000 visitors attended the 2007 X Prize Cup. Although there was no X Prize Cup in 2009, there was a Lunar Lander Challenge.
The Archon Genomics X PRIZE presented by Express Scripts for Genomics, the second X Prize offered by the X Prize Foundation, based in Playa Vista, California, was announced on October 4, 2006 stating that the prize of "$10 million will be awarded to the first team to rapidly, accurately and economically sequence 100 whole human genomes to an unprecedented level of accuracy." The 30 day evaluation phase of the competition to begin on September 5, 2013, was canceled August 22, 2013 and this cancellation was debated on March 27, 2014.
A space competition is an inducement prize contest offering a prize to be given to the first competitor who demonstrates a space vehicle, or a space exploration apparatus, which meets a set of pre-established criteria. It spurs pioneering development in private spaceflight.
Superleague Formula was an open wheel single seater motor racing formula, which started in 2008, at Donington Park in the United Kingdom. The league introduced team sponsorship by association football clubs. It used the slogan 'The Beautiful Race: Football at 300 km/h'. By 2011 the link with football was fading with more than half the teams no longer associated with football teams. It was founded by businessmen Alex Andreu and Robin Webb. On 19 May 2010, Andreu stepped down in his role as series president, with Alfredo Brisac named as his successor not many weeks later. The season ran between April and November at the same time as most other European race series. Every team used identical cars and 750-horsepower V-12 engines. The Sonangol Group was the series' title sponsor from June 2009 until the end of the 2010 season.
Elevator:2010 was an inducement prize contest with the purpose of developing space elevator and space elevator-related technologies. Elevator:2010 organized annual competitions for climbers, ribbons and power-beaming systems, and was operated by a partnership between Spaceward Foundation and the NASA Centennial Challenges.
The Google Lunar XPRIZE (GLXP), sometimes referred to as Moon 2.0, was a 2007–2018 inducement prize space competition organized by the X Prize Foundation, and sponsored by Google. The challenge called for privately funded teams to be the first to land a robotic spacecraft on the Moon, travel 500 meters, and transmit back to Earth high-definition video and images.
AV Open is a major awards contest for the Japanese adult video industry. It went from a limited sales contest in 2006 to become, via its successor the AV GrandPrix, the major Japanese AV award with nearly 100 participating companies competing for the 2009 awards. The AV GrandPrix awards were not extended beyond 2009 but after a hiatus of seven years, the AV Open award competition was resurrected in 2014.
The Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE was an inducement prize contest, that originally offered a US$7 million grand prize, US$2 million second prize, and US$1 million third prize to the best among the finalists offering an automatic non-invasive health diagnostics system in a single portable package that weighs no more than 5 pounds (2.3 kg), able to autonomously diagnose 13 medical conditions, including anemia, atrial fibrillation, Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), diabetes, leukocytosis, pneumonia, otitis media, sleep apnea, and urinary tract infection. The winning devices must also be able to continuously record and stream the 5 main vital signs: blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen saturation, respiratory rate and temperature. The name is taken from the tricorder device from the science fiction TV series Star Trek which can be used to instantly diagnose ailments. The prize was initially announced by the X PRIZE Foundation on 10 May 2011 and subsequently launched on 10 January 2012 at CES 2012. Devices were sent to the University of California San Diego to be independently tested on patients during the winter and spring of 2015, and again in late 2016 at the Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute (ACTRI) at UCSD. Although no team successfully met all the requirements of the grand prize, the competition was concluded in April 2017 when the XPRIZE Foundation awarded reduced prizes to the strongest performing teams. Most notably, Final Frontier Medical Devices was awarded US$2.6 million and Dynamical Biomarkers won US$1 million. A third team, Cloud DX, was named "Bold Epic Innovator" and awarded US$100,000 for achieving the main milestones of the competition while missing a crucial deadline. Earlier in 2016, some of the funds from the original prize purse were awarded to semi-finalist teams for hitting technology milestones. For the first time at any XPRIZE, the leftover funds from the main prize purse have been earmarked for further development, consumer testing and commercialization of tricorder prototypes for the two finalists and four semi-finalist teams as part of the Post Prize Initiative.
Broadcom MASTERS, a program of Society for Science & the Public (SSP), is a national science competition for U.S. middle school students. The Broadcom Foundation launched the competition in 2010 and pledged $6 million over the next 6 years. In 2014, approximately 6,000 middle school students were eligible for entry and 2,054 students completed and submitted an application.
The Schmidt Family Foundation is a private foundation created in 2006 by Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Google, and his wife Wendy Schmidt, to address issues pertaining to sustainability and the responsible use of natural resources.
Wendy Schmidt is an American businesswoman and philanthropist. She is the wife of Eric Schmidt, the former Executive Chairman of Google, whom she met in graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the president of the Schmidt Family Foundation.
Dream Build Play is an annual $75,000 Microsoft video game contest used to promote Microsoft XNA Game Studio and eventually Xbox LIVE Indie Games. It was announced in 2006, started in 2007, and ran until 2012. It was restarted in 2017 as the Dream.Build.Play 2017 Challenge. Notable winners include Dust: An Elysian Tail and The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai.
Cristin Ann Dorgelo is the President Emeritus of the Association of Science and Technology Centers, where she previously served as President and CEO. She served as the Chief of Staff at the Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Barack Obama White House.
