Results for “emergent ventures prizes”

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I believe that we should be using prizes to help innovate and combat the coronavirus. When are prizes better than grants? The case for prizes is stronger when you don’t know who is likely to make the breakthrough, you value the final output more than the process, there is an urgency to solutions (talent development is too slow), success is relatively easy to define, and efforts and investments are likely to be undercompensated. All of these apply to the threat from the coronavirus.

We do not know who are the most likely candidates to come up with the best tests, the best remedies and cures, the best innovations in social distancing, and the best policy proposals. Anyone in the world could make a contribution to the anti-virus effort and it won’t work to just give a chunk of money to say Harvard or MIT.

Progress is urgent. I am still keen on talent development for this and other problems, but the situation is worse every week, every day. It is important to incentivize those who are working on these problems now.

The innovators, medical professionals and policy people at work on this issue are unlikely to receive anything close to the full social value of their efforts.

I therefore am grateful that I have been able to raise a new chunk of money for Emergent Ventures — a project of the Mercatus Center — for ex post prizes (not grants) for those who make progress in coronavirus problems.

Here are the newly established prizes on offer:

1. Best investigative journalism on coronavirus — 50k

2. Best blog or social media tracking/analysis of the virus — 100k

3. Best (justified) coronavirus policy writing — 50k

4. Best effort to find a good treatment rapidly — 500k, second prize 200k

5. Best innovation in social distancing — 100k

6. Most important innovation or improvement for India — 100k

What might be an example of a winning project?  What if this attempt to build scalable respirators succeeded?  That would be a natural winner.  Or a social distancing innovation might be the roll out of more meals on wheels, little libraries, online worship, easier ways to work from home, and so on.  The vision is to give to people whose work actually will be encouraged, not to give to Amazon (sorry Jeff!), no matter how many wonderful things they do.

These are not prizes you apply for, they will be awarded by Emergent Ventures when a significant success is spotted.  (That said, you still can propose a coronavirus-related project through normal channels, with discretionary amounts to be awarded as grants per usual procedures.)  And typically the awards will apply to actions taken after the release of this announcement.

I would love to be able to offer more second and third prizes for these efforts, and also to increase the amounts on offer, and perhaps cover more countries too. Or perhaps you have an idea for an additional category of prize. So if you are a person of means and able to consider making a significant (tax-deductible) contribution, please email me and we can discuss.

In the meantime, the rest of you all need to get to work.

I am happy to announce the first cohort of Emergent Ventures prize winners for their work fighting the coronavirus.  Here is a repeat of the original prize announcement, and one week or so later I am delighted there are four strong winners, with likely some others on the way. Again, this part of Emergent Ventures comes to you courtesy of the Mercatus Center and George Mason University. Here is the list of winners:

Social leadership prize: Helen Chu and her team at the University of Washington.  Here is a NYT article about Helen Chu’s work, excerpt:

Dr. Helen Y. Chu, an infectious disease expert in Seattle, knew that the United States did not have much time…

As luck would have it, Dr. Chu had a way to monitor the region. For months, as part of a research project into the flu, she and a team of researchers had been collecting nasal swabs from residents experiencing symptoms throughout the Puget Sound region.

To repurpose the tests for monitoring the coronavirus, they would need the support of state and federal officials. But nearly everywhere Dr. Chu turned, officials repeatedly rejected the idea, interviews and emails show, even as weeks crawled by and outbreaks emerged in countries outside of China, where the infection began.

By Feb. 25, Dr. Chu and her colleagues could not bear to wait any longer. They began performing coronavirus tests, without government approval.

What came back confirmed their worst fear. They quickly had a positive test from a local teenager with no recent travel history. The coronavirus had already established itself on American soil without anybody realizing it.

And to think Helen is only an assistant professor.

Data gathering and presentation prize: Avi Schiffmann

Here is a good write-up on Avi Schiffmann, excerpt:

A self-taught computer maven from Seattle, Avi Schiffmann uses web scraping technology to accurately report on developing pandemic, while fighting misinformation and panic.

Avi started doing this work in December, remarkable prescience, and he is only 17 years old.  Here is a good interview with him:

I’d like to be the next Avi Schiffmann and make the next really big thing that will change everything.

Here is Avi’s website, ncov2019.live/data.

Prize for good policy thinking: The Imperial College researchers, led by Neil Ferguson, epidemiologist.

Neil and his team calculated numerically what the basic options and policy trade-offs were in the coronavirus space.  Even those who disagree with parts of their model are using it as a basic framework for discussion.  Here is their core paper.

The Financial Times referred to it as “The shocking coronavirus study that rocked the UK and US…Five charts highlight why Imperial College’s research radically changed government policy.”

The New York Times reported “White House Takes New Line After Dire Report on Death Toll.”  Again, referring to the Imperial study.

Note that Neil is working on despite having coronavirus symptoms.  His earlier actions were heroic too:

Ferguson has taken a lead, advising ministers and explaining his predictions in newspapers and on TV and radio, because he is that valuable thing, a good scientist who is also a good communicator.

Furthermore:

He is a workaholic, according to his colleague Christl Donnelly, a professor of statistical epidemiology based at Oxford University most of the time, as well as at Imperial. “He works harder than anyone I have ever met,” she said. “He is simultaneously attending very large numbers of meetings while running the group from an organisational point of view and doing programming himself. Any one of those things could take somebody their full time.

“One of his friends said he should slow down – this is a marathon not a sprint. He said he is going to do the marathon at sprint speed. It is not just work ethic – it is also energy. He seems to be able to keep going. He must sleep a bit, but I think not much.”

Prize for rapid speedy response:  Curative, Inc. (legal name Snap Genomics, based in Silicon Valley)

Originally a sepsis diagnostics company, they very rapidly repositioned their staff and laboratories to scale up COVID-19 testing.  They also acted rapidly, early, and pro-actively to round up the necessary materials for such testing, and they are currently churning out a high number of usable test kits each day, with that number rising rapidly.  The company is also working on identifying which are the individuals most like to spread the disease and getting them tested first.  here is some of their progress from yesterday.

Testing and data are so important in this area.

General remarks and thanks: I wish to thank both the founding donor and all of you who have subsequently made very generous donations to this venture.  If you are a person of means and in a position to make a donation to enable this work to go further, with more prizes and better funded prizes, please do email me.