After 100+ nominations & applications we are proud to present the first cohort of 2020 winners.
Supercomputers, drones, robots, transformative gadgets, quantum computing, 3D Printers, etc. These advancements are allowing us to re-imagine and re-engineer our world. But what will they mean for the future of our society? How will society relate to knowledge, information, and new social classes (those who have or create the knowledge and those who consume it)?
Pezesha is a Kenyan fintech startup offering a secure P-2-P marketplace platform allowing Kenyans to be a lender, borrower, or both for other Kenyans. The startup has the backing of strategic seed investment from angel investors as well as Consonance Investment Managers.
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The Partnership on AI is an organization that works to provide the public with research on how artificial intelligence (AI) should be utilized in the future. Not only does the Partnership on AI work to find the best applications for AI, but they create and encourage a public dialogue on the technology.
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New Age Meats wants to think how society thinks about meat, suggesting we can enjoy meat without slaughtering animals. The company grows meat from animal cells, providing a healthier alternative which is more environmentally friendly, more ethical, and ultimately supports human health outcomes.
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myAgro seeks to support smallholder farmers in Senegal, Mali, and Tanzania who lack access to banks by providing alternative means to buy needed materials. myAgro addressed this access gap through the development of a unique mobile layaway system to act as an alternative to credit.
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Ecoation is a Canadian company that changes how we produce and think about food. Through utilizing artificial intelligence (AI)and working with growers, Ecoation is working to address one of the most major issues prevalent in horticulture today: labor shortage.
Read MoreWe know Artificial Intelligence will reign supreme in our imaginations but the World in 2050 will not be a battleground between AIs and humans. Augmented humans will test the limits of humanity and they are already walking among us now. Biotechnology and gene editing are allowing us to engineer a new kind of human, one that will be more resilient to disease. But what are the ethical and legal implications of these advancements?
Programa Valentina is a Guatemalan organization which seeks to reduce unemployment among the country’s youth while boosting the Guatemalan economy by offering open source training, certification, and placement services. The organization claims that by 2027, it will provide the most influential program of its type in Latin America.
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Mimosa works to help people with diabetes manage their foot care via Mimosa’s innovative mobile-health platform. The Canadian company seeks to support diabetics as they face unique healthcare challenges, as diabetics are 23 times more likely that the general populace to need their lower extremities to be amputated.
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Lifeshelter is a humanitarian organization that assists refugees and internally displaced persons by providing them with durable and sustainable shelter. To this end, Lifeshelter has created a modular, panel-based shelter that can be mass-produced economically.
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Koniku mobilizes biotechnology to better detect disease, offering their services to security and military services while also innovating ways to detect diseases in the future. Their work spans several sectors, not being relegated only to security, and they are working on new ways to use emerging technology to address infectious threats.
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Hospice Egypt works to improve the lives of terminally ill patients in Egypt, alleviating symptoms and providing support for the patients. Terminally ill patients are an often marginalized group, at times being unable to obtain the care they deserve.
Read MoreHumans’ impact on the planet is so irreversibly profound that exploring alternative forms of energy is paramount to our species' survival in the long term. Innovations and cutting-edge research is already in the works but the goal of our generation will be to become less and less dependent from fossil fuels. Can we engineer innovations that will save us from climate change and that are profitable and sustainable?
Sanivation works in Kenya to create energy out of fecal matter through treatment plants. The organization has created fecal sludge treatment plants and sanitation services while working with the Kenyan government and local organizations reaching numerous communities across the country.
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Since its founding in 2017, Resync has won over a dozen awards at a flurry of prestigious international conferences and forums. The Singapore-based company hopes to revolutionize smart buildings and renewable energy through use of its AI-based energy management platform for smart buildings and systems with solar panels, car charging stations, and other renewable energy infrastructure.
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Based out of Iceland, Carbfix has finally established a method by which to safely and permanently discard CO2, one of the foremost catalysts of climate change. In their method, water and dissolved carbon dioxide are injected into reactive rock formations like basalt deep in the Earth.
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In 2019, the World Economic Forum helped facilitate the creation of the Loop Alliance, a multi-industry partnership aimed at promoting sustainable consumption by eliminating the need for single-use plastics.
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Climeworks started with a lofty goal: to reverse climate change by restoring a healthy balance of CO2 to the planet. The Switzerland-based company has developed technology capable of permanently removing CO2 from the atmosphere by drawing it directly from the air, and they have already been the recipients of an incredible amount of private investment for their work.
Read MoreOn a large scale, humanity is constantly struggling against bacteria and disease as well as non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Today our focus is on primary prevention (intervening before a disease is developed) or secondary prevention (preventing progression of a disease when you are already sick). In the near future, we will be solving for “primordial prevention,” looking at the prevention of the risk factors in the first place, and we will treat age as a disease that not only can be “cured” but can be prevented.
Johns Hopkins University has invented an electronic skin, known as an e-dermis, to revolutionize prosthetics and skin replacement by solving the “phantom limb” sensation reported by many amputees. The invention was first envisioned in a 2018 article published by Amy Lunday and was later developed by a team of engineers.
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EchoNous Inc. means “intelligent sound” in Greek, embodying the company’s vision: to add the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and the extreme miniaturization of sound to solve common problems in healthcare. To this end, the EchoNous team has developed the Kosmos platform to improve on the traditional tools of the stethoscope, EKG, and ultrasound to assess the health of our heart and lungs.
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Researchers at the University of Texas have found a way to noninvasively diagnose cancer within seconds. Their innovative technology – called MasSpec Pen – acts like a mass spectrometer, analyzes lipids, metabolites, and proteins contained in small samples of tissue and water droplets to diagnose cancer.
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Cyclica works to assist patients by creating a digital research platform accessible by medical researchers anywhere in the world. The platform – backed by artificial intelligence – widens the polypharmacological approach to drug development, allowing researchers to connect and collaborate globally.
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CRISPR Therapeutics seek to change how society views hereditary genetic illnesses through gene editing. By precisely cutting DNA and then letting it heal naturally, CRISPR Therapeutics can change negative medical outcomes for thousands of people.
Read MoreFlying cars, the hyperloop, intergalactic travel? These are not Sci-Fi visions of the future but the world now. At the famous World’s Fair in New York in 1939, GM envisioned a futuristic society where highways connected the rural to the urban. With 70% of the world’s population moving to the urban sphere in the coming decades, innovating in the transportation realm will be paramount.
MDGo describes itself as the bridge between health care and the automotive industry. Backed by Volvo and Hyundai, the company has a promising future thanks to its revolutionary trauma analysis technology, inspired by a co-founder’s experience attempting to help a friend who had been in an accident he did not see.
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Fueled by the idea that mobility can be delivered as a service, MaaS Global developed Whim, an app that seeks to bring a new perspective to transit. Unlike other transportation-based apps, Whim acts as a one-stop shop for all of a person’s possible transportation needs, including public transportation, taxis, rental cars, city bikes, and e-scooters.
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Bird is a company focused on carbon-neutral micromobility, attempting to replace the world’s need for cars with green options available through the use of an app. Present in over 100 cities across the United States, each vehicle that they put on the streets is estimated to save up to 1,500 pounds of CO2 from being emitted per year.
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Kitty Hawk is an ambitious company – their choice of name, an homage to the city where the Wright Brothers first took flight, reflects their mission to stand on the front lines of a new generation of transport. With a revolution in Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) technology, Kitty Hawk may be able to complete its quest “to free the world from traffic.”
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When thinking about the future of cars, most people’s minds wander to the flying cars that The Jetsons once promised us,soaring far above the Earth in complete avoidance of the roads which once trapped us in traffic for hours on end. The Boring Company offers us a new take –instead of rising above our problems, we should tunnel below them, creating underground loops to connect our cities everywhere.
Read MoreSpace is the next great frontier and becoming a multi-planetary species is one of the most important future-forward achievements we can strive for. Advancements in space flight and moonshots by both private sector (SpaceX and Virgin Galactic) and governments (i.e. UAE’s Mars 2117 initiative) will make ours the first Mars Generation. What is your vision for the future of space travel?
Located in Israel’s Negev Desert, the Desert Mars Analog Ramon Station is an attempt to bring space to Earth by modelling on our planet the conditions that Mars colonists would face. The site was chosen for the distinct similarities between the Negev Desert’s climate and soil conditions and those of the red planet.
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Founded in 2010 in an attempt to earn a Google Lunar XPRIZE, SpaceIL owns the honor of being the first ever non-governmental organization to reach the moon with a spacecraft. In 2019, their robotic lander Beresheet entered lunar orbit, becoming the first Israeli craft to do so. It is one of the smallest spacecraft ever, and cost very little to produce.
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Planet Labs offers daily, persistent satellite imaging of the Earth’s entire surface, making global change “visible, accessible, and actionable” in a timely manner. Their mission to continuously map the entire planet with the largest fleet of private satellites in existence involves the processing of over 11 terabytes of information daily.
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The Mars Exploration Program began in 1994 and has organized all four of the United States’ Mars Rover programs: Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity. Their current mission is to create a “continuous flow of scientific information and discovery” between the two planets with a connected network of orbiters, landers, laboratories, and eventually, settlements.
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SpaceX is without a doubt the world’s most successful project for private spaceflight, having conducted 92 launches since its inception in 2002 and achieving a number of milestones most others have not even begun to approach.
Read MoreWhat about art, poetry, or inventions for things and issues that have not even been imagined yet? What is the role of art, pop culture, or film in solving for the future? This category is for the dreamers who will marry the practical to the whimsical.
XPRIZE was founded on a single premise: that the solutions to our world’s problems can be found as long an incentive to produce them exists. They do not throw money at issues; rather, they create multimillion-dollar prize purses and offer them to individuals and teams who are willing to provide the world with innovative new solutions.
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Based out of Austria, Polycular is a design studio that explores how interactive technology and virtual experiences can allow us to develop deeper connections with the real world. Recipients of dozens of accolades, including the Umdasch Prize for Learning and Education, the Salzburg Marketing Award, the Sustainable Entrepreneurship Award, and the World Summit Award for Education, their work spans multiple genres.
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Think-Film Impact Production believes that storytelling can change policy. This principle underlies their mission: partnering with artists, filmmakers, business leaders, NGOs, and activists to develop media that aims to inspire widespread social change at both a grassroots and international level.
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NLÉ – which means “at home” in Yoruba – is an architecture and design firm co-located in Nigeria and The Netherlands. NLÉ’s mission is to shape “the physical, human, cultural, and economic architectures of developing cities and communities.”
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