20th October 2017
On October 5-7th in California the annual XPrize Visioneer’s Summit took place. Here five teams (Alzheimer’s, Clean Air, Re-imagining Democracy, Zero Waste Mining and Cybersecurity) competed for the challenge to become the focus for the 2018 XPRIZE competition.
As mentioned the original Xprize post (see below), WYLD members supported the Alzheimer’s Xprize team by creating videos for the pitch. The XPRIZE team’s founding members are George Vradenburg and Co-Founder and Chairman of UsAgainstAlzheimer’s and Ken Dychtwald, Founder and CEO of Age Wave.
Proposals were reviewed and evaluated by a group of 250 prominent corporate and government leaders, top innovators, respected philanthropists, and leading entrepreneurs. The hard work behind the Alzheimer’s team’s proposal paid off and they received the highest honors of the evening. The project now advances as a grand challenge for a 2018 competition.
Please read the XPRIZE press release for more information click here.
A huge congratulations from the members of WYLD to the Alzheimer’s XPRIZE team!
Sincerely,
WYLD Steering Group
3rd October 2017
As members of the World Young Leaders in Dementia (WYLD), we are each emerging professionals committed to finding sustainable dementia solutions for both the care and the cure side of the dementia coin. We adamantly believe that we need to care, support and empower those who are currently living with dementia today- as well as search for solutions for prevention and treatment for tomorrow. In light of this, WYLD would like to introduce you to an exciting, progressive new venture in the area of prevention and cure.
The XPRIZE is a non-profit and the global leader in solving the world’s grandest challenges by creating and managing large-scale incentive prized competitions. This group looks at very significant, audacious, grand challenges facing humanity and then if there is a way to gamify innovation from small teams around the world to incentivize them to participate in solving a grand challenge, and then they put that into a competition format. The XPRIZE team then crowdsource the world for those solutions through highly leveraged prize purses ranging from $5 million to $30 million!
To select the topic of the nextXPRIZE, teams will pitch their challenge to potential investors at the Visioneers Summit. This year, one of the teams is pitching for Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia, to become the next grand challenge. This team is proposing an XPRIZE Alzheimer’s competition to identify a biotarget that can predict the disease and be targeted to prevent the disease. Their plan is to challenge teams from around the globe to develop accurate, affordable, scalable, and minimally invasive technologies for detecting the earliest signs of Alzheimer’s and potential delay the onset or perhaps, find a treatment. The goal is to lessen the impact by delaying the onset and slowing the progression- as we currently do with other age-related disease.
WYLD is already doing what we can to help Alzheimer’s be chosen for the next XPRIZE. Individuals from four different continents have submitted short videos that will be included in a promotional video during the pitch. Our members are speaking out to demonstrate the tremendous need and global support, particularly from young innovators, for an Alzheimer’s XPRIZE.
It is true that across the globe, improvements in healthcare and social care need to be pushed forward, as well as a search for a cure. In this search, let us also remember who the true dementia experts are- those who are actually living with dementia.
We at WYLD are looking forward to seeing the success of the XPRIZE campaign.
Please stay tuned for future news about this worthy venture.
Laura Booi,
WYLD Steering Group Member, Montreal, Canada
