Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE Announces Roster of Teams and Advisory Board
October 13, 2016
XPRIZE announced today a total of 32 teams from 22 countries will compete to win the $7M Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE . The three-year global competition, announced in December 2015 , challenges teams to advance technologies for rapid, unmanned, and high-resolution ocean exploration and discovery.
A Scientific Advisory Board was also announced that will advise the Ocean Discovery XPRIZE. The board is comprised of nine leading experts in the fields of oceanography, Geographical Information Systems (GIS), underwater technologies, and imagery. Members from NOAA include:
- Alan P. Leonardi, Ph.D., director, NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research
- Christopher L. Sabine, Ph.D., director of NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory and an affiliate faculty member at the University of Washington School of Oceanography
- Richard W. (Rick) Spinrad, Ph.D., chief scientist of NOAA
As part of the total $7 million prize, NOAA is offering a $1 million bonus prize to teams that demonstrate technology that can find a specified object in the ocean through biological and chemical signals and trace its source.
"The goal of the $1 million NOAA bonus prize is to aid NOAA's marine resource management responsibilities by identifying technologies capable of detecting and tracking sources of marine pollution, locating deep-ocean hydrothermal vents and methane seeps, and monitoring marine life for scientific research and conservation efforts,” said Alan Leonardi, director of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research.
The competition will take place in two rounds of testing over three years. Competing teams will submit technical documentation by December 2016, at which point a panel of expert judges will down-select up to 25 teams to continue to develop their solutions for the first round of testing.
See the XPRIZE press release here .