Difference between revisions of "Judging/Awards"

1. Best Diagnostics Project: Many medical conditions can be successfully treated if only they are diagnosed at an early enough stage. Can your team come up with faster, cheaper and better diagnostics techniques to improve access to medical treatment worldwide?
2. Best Energy Project: World energy consumption has increased by roughly a factor of six since 1950. In May 2013, atmospheric C02 readings taken at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii surpassed 400 ppm for the first time, an unsustainably high concentration of CO2. Can we use synthetic biology to create energy technologies that produce less CO2, make energy using feedstock and waste materials or otherwise sustainably generate energy?
3. Best Environment Project: The quality of the air, water, and land, both on Earth and other heavenly bodies, limits the happiness of humans and other creatures. Can biotechnology be used to help clean the air, provide fresh drinking water, restore or enhance soil quality, terraform a near-Earth asteroid, or protect, preserve, or enhance natural biological diversity?
4. Best Food and Nutrition Project: People need to eat. Can biotechnology be responsibly used to produce food or nutritional molecules without causing widespread shortages of either, and without harming the environment that future generations will inherit?
5. Best Foundational Advance Project: Just thirty-five years ago, scientists could not cut and paste pre-existing fragments of genetic material like we can today. The discovery and application of DNA recombination allowed us to assemble new genes. The synthetic biology community needs other enabling technologies that help to make new accomplishments possible. What are other types of basic tricks does nature use? Have you discovered and applied one that could revolutionize synthetic biology?
6. Best Information Processing Project: The diversity and abundance of biological properties, behaviors, and parts presents a huge information processing challenge. Has your project led to an innovative system that allows us to navigate and use lots of information quickly and effectively?
7. Best Manufacturing Project: Have you ever heard of nanotechnology? Well, biology is a nanotechnology that already exists, and that actually works. The ribosome is a programmable nanoassembler embedded within a reproducing machine. Could we responsibly use biology to manufacture useful products, from the nanoscale (atoms) to the decascale (buildings and bridges)? What can biology be programmed to manufacture?
8. Best New Application Project: We're guessing that you have great ideas that nobody has ever thought about, or if they have they forgot to tell somebody else. Can you imagine an entirely new application area for biological technology?
9. Best Therapeutics Project: Many health and medical problems can best be addressed with new and novel therapies. What can synthetic biology do to improve techniques, technology and access to new and novel therapies?

Special Prizes list coming soon!