Algeon Materials is on a mission to fight climate change and reduce plastic pollution. Plastic manufacturing contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and plastic pollution is a serious threat to the environment. 90% of petroleum-based plastics have never been recycled and can take up to 500 years to degrade. Companies need access to materials that help them meet their business needs (mechanical properties, ESG goals, consumer desire), plastics manufacturers need access to a reliable material supply that works with their existing machinery, and consumers want products that don’t pollute the environment. Algeon Materials is creating sustainable and environmentally friendly bioplastics from kelp. Kelp, a macroalgae, has properties that lend themselves to plastic creation. Kelp is the ideal solution because it’s a regenerative resource and farming it requires virtually zero inputs: no land, fresh water, or fertilizer. This solution supports 7 of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Black Girls Dreaming is a multimodal sensory art installation that epitomizes the value of art for social change. The installation brings to life the multiple and often contradictory experiences of Black girls. It is a place for Black girls to hear, see, smell, taste, and witness their own lived experiences. As suicide rates among Black girls continue to rise we are compelled to create this space as a communal healing space for Black girls and allies to join us in our efforts to make the world a more livable and safe place for all Black girls. Further, this silent art exhibit features interactive art rooms exploring topics related to the multiple experiences of Black girlhood. Each room in the exhibit is a carefully created space that features the art work of Black girls across the African Diaspora.
Every year, millions of people suffer brain injuries, yet diagnosis and treatment guidance is limited by traditional healthcare options. Confidence aims to improve the experience of brain injury patients and healthcare professionals by using a patient’s smartphone data to provide optimized and personalized care. After a suspected or known brain injury, healthcare professionals will direct patients to download the Confidence application to their smartphones, which will allow the application to locally access and analyze the patient’s data to analyze for changes correlated to brain injury, such as cognition, mobility, emotional stability, and general activity. A summary of this information will be provided to the healthcare team so it can be used to assist in diagnosis and guide treatment options. Ultimately, Confidence will give each patient customized rehabilitation that increases their recovery and opportunities to continue thriving in their community.
The NFT Inclusion Project pitches at the Spring 2022 Big Ideas Grand Prize Pitch Day, May 4, 2022.
NFTs use blockchain to prove the originality of any online content, and thus have the potential to revolutionize how we make and invest money online. Yet, women and minority groups are once again excluded, with a 95% male creator market who receive 77% of all NFT revenue, and males accounting for 3x the ownership of non-males. The NFT Inclusion project aims to create an NFT marketplace that focuses on principles of access, education and community building for a previously excluded voice in both the technological and financial ecosystems. The goal is not to encourage women and minority groups to break into a world that isn’t designed for them, nor are we looking to reinvent the wheel. Instead, it is to take a model that we’re familiar with (ie. online shopping for big fashion retailers like ASOS) and apply it to invite a wider audience into the world of buying and minting NFTs.
About 37.8% of food produce is lost at Kampala markets before reaching the end-consumer. This is partly due to improper storage and preservation methods, where market vendors currently store their fresh food produce in wooden cabinets, which don’t have a cooling element to curb the short shelf-life enigma of fresh produce. The existing electricity or fuel powered refrigerators cannot be implemented at Kampala markets due to the operating costs, which cannot be afforded by the market vendors. Also, solar-powered refrigerators cannot be adopted due to their unreliability while it’s raining or at night, and have questionable power requirements to suffice the large market. Hence, FPC is the proposed solution, which uses energy from the footsteps of people at markets to power the coolers, which increases the shelf life of food without any operation cost requirement (fuel or electricity) — and hence, reduces food wastage at market level.
Over the past 20 years, vaccinations have prevented over 2 million deaths. This triumph, however, has not been a panacea. Today, 1 million children in low- and middle-income countries continue to die from vaccine-preventable diseases each year. This inequality is largely fueled by technical challenges surrounding the administration of vaccines using hypodermic needles. The MEDiRoller, consists of a novel, handle applicator, containing a spring-loaded delivery system and one of our two types of single-use polymeric microneedle cartridges. The two types of cartridges include a novel cartridge containing a hexagonal solid microneedle roller, that can raster across skin to treat larger surface areas, as well as a MNP cartridge containing a sterile biomedical sponge for sterile vaccine or drug containment and loading, followed by delivery through hollow microneedles. This Big Idea, if successfully developed, will revolutionize vaccine and drug delivery in low-resource communities.
Portland cement concrete is the most widely used man-made material in the world and its production is responsible for 8% of all industrial carbon dioxide emissions. Hence it is of paramount importance to reduce these emissions to avoid the disastrous effects of climate change. The traditional process of cement manufacturing involves the use of fossil fuels to process limestone which generates large amounts of greenhouse gases. Using electricity from renewable sources like solar and wind, it is possible to convert limestone into calcium hydroxide in a device called an electrolyzer. In the further stages of processing, the use of calcium hydroxide completely eliminates CO2 emissions. The electrolyzer also generates high-value gases like hydrogen and other hydrocarbons which are widely used in industry. This technology has tremendous potential to transform cement and chemical manufacturing into a carbon-free, zero-emissions industry.
We need to set a robust way to price carbon dioxide to allow markets to price in the cost of climate change. The most accepted method to price carbon employs complex models that are owned and run by scientists and policymakers in silos. Organizations, citizens and stakeholders don’t have access to them, and these models static data. Carbon pricing DAO’s plans to solve this issue by enabling open access to these models by cloud-hosting them, and providing APIs for web2 and web3 access. Additionally, Carbon Pricing DAOs will also build realtime climate oracles, that will assess the earth state, verify them and cryptographically sign this crucial data to these models, so that they’re up-to-date. Futhermore, it will develop a DAO creation tool that allows any organization to setup their own model, and achieve consensus on price-setting through this DAO. In conclusion, by allowing organizations to accurately set carbon Pricing for themselves, we will enable CO2 to be treated as a precious asset in the climate crisis.
Imagine graduating from college and having to wait three to five years before getting a stable job — this is the story of many young Nigerian college graduates. Madojo seeks to connect college students, employers, and entrepreneurial opportunities in Nigeria by hosting and micro-credentialing professional case challenge experiences. The name Madojo is coined from the words for community in the three major languages in Nigeria (Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba). As a community of learners and opportunity seekers, the web-platform combined with in-person networks across major private and public universities in Nigeria will prepare students through real-world business cases to bridge the experience gap between the skills that students have and what employers in Nigeria seek in ideal candidates. The goal is to be a community of the future where professional trust is built on shared experiences and expectations that are publicly verified on a blockchain through micro-credentialing.
