Spring Break
Google seeks minds for University
Mike Swift, MCT CAMPUS
Issue date: 2/6/09 Section: News
SAN JOSE, Calif.-Peter Diamandis, the founder of the X Prize, does not think small.
California's Silicon Valley is a place where "disruptive" technology has often spawned tremendous personal wealth. But Diamandis thinks the Valley could also be a seedbed for the world's brightest young minds to come together to attack humankind's worst problems-things like climate change, poverty and disease.
That is the dream behind Singularity University, an effort by Diamandis, futurist Ray Kurzweil, NASA's Ames Research Center and Google to harness the collective smarts of the world's brightest young scientists and entrepreneurs in fields like artificial intelligence, nanotechnology and genetics to help the planet.
The venture, to be permanently based at NASA's Moffett Field, Calif., is being announced Tuesday.
Just as NASA's moon shot in the 1960s combined quantum advances in computing, rocketry and material sciences into one dramatic technological achievement, Singularity University would try to build bridges between separate towers of knowledge-and perhaps spawn a few new Silicon Valley companies in the process.
"We are bringing the top future leaders from around the world, early in their careers, to Silicon Valley, and that's a big deal," said Diamandis, whose X Prize competition led to SpaceShipOne, the first successful privately developed spacecraft, in 2004.
The summer program at Moffett Field will seek out young graduate and post-graduate students with the strongest leadership and entrepreneurial skills.
In 2007, Diamandis teamed with the Mountain View Internet search giant to offer the Google Lunar X Prize, a $30 million competition for the first team to send a robotic lander to the Moon.
Google is the founding corporate sponsor for Singularity University, contributing $250,000. The founders expect tuition to be about $25,000, but aid would be available.
The name for their new brainchild is drawn from Kurzweil's 2005 book, "The Singularity Is Near," which argues that human knowledge in computers, genetics and other information-driven fields is growing at an exponential rate, and that human life will be utterly transformed as the curve of increasing knowledge steepens.
California's Silicon Valley is a place where "disruptive" technology has often spawned tremendous personal wealth. But Diamandis thinks the Valley could also be a seedbed for the world's brightest young minds to come together to attack humankind's worst problems-things like climate change, poverty and disease.
That is the dream behind Singularity University, an effort by Diamandis, futurist Ray Kurzweil, NASA's Ames Research Center and Google to harness the collective smarts of the world's brightest young scientists and entrepreneurs in fields like artificial intelligence, nanotechnology and genetics to help the planet.
The venture, to be permanently based at NASA's Moffett Field, Calif., is being announced Tuesday.
Just as NASA's moon shot in the 1960s combined quantum advances in computing, rocketry and material sciences into one dramatic technological achievement, Singularity University would try to build bridges between separate towers of knowledge-and perhaps spawn a few new Silicon Valley companies in the process.
"We are bringing the top future leaders from around the world, early in their careers, to Silicon Valley, and that's a big deal," said Diamandis, whose X Prize competition led to SpaceShipOne, the first successful privately developed spacecraft, in 2004.
The summer program at Moffett Field will seek out young graduate and post-graduate students with the strongest leadership and entrepreneurial skills.
In 2007, Diamandis teamed with the Mountain View Internet search giant to offer the Google Lunar X Prize, a $30 million competition for the first team to send a robotic lander to the Moon.
Google is the founding corporate sponsor for Singularity University, contributing $250,000. The founders expect tuition to be about $25,000, but aid would be available.
The name for their new brainchild is drawn from Kurzweil's 2005 book, "The Singularity Is Near," which argues that human knowledge in computers, genetics and other information-driven fields is growing at an exponential rate, and that human life will be utterly transformed as the curve of increasing knowledge steepens.
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