
Entry closes 31st December 2020.
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The Pandemic Challenge
How are you going to stop this virus damaging global society?
The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, the cause of COVID-19 disease, threatens all our lives and the global economy.
Open to all.
Scientists are unsure as to how long the virus will remain a threat to us, and until a vaccine or a cure is found we will be forced to live and work in a pandemic economy. Your ideas could help save lives, and to live better lives during this difficult time.
Step up to the Challenge!
We are developing relationships with academia and corporate partners to provide incentives to people with big ideas to abate the pandemic.
The first competition received an amazing number of excellent proposals, with the winner being awarded a place at Singularity University’s Executive Programme in Silicon Valley in California. The Top 5 ideas are available for download here. This time we are seeking purely ideas and can help you match these with corporates and venture capitalists where they make sense. We can respond to you 24/7.
Deadline for ideas:
Your ideas will be welcome, and will keep this open until 31st December 2020.

"Glad to see that you made such an excellent selection for the program"
Claudia Olsson

"Great contest! Happy to be able to contribute!"
Samantha Ghiotti

"Kudos to Pandemic Challenge for making a difference."
Alex Wong

"Many of the proposals were really impressive. Delighted to have been able to contribute to this meaningful initiative."
Ting Zhang
TOP 5 From The Pilot Competition
Dorothea Koh
Bot MD, Singapore
Trevor Costello
Aqua 21, UK
Asiye Karakullukçu
AKSense, Turkey/ UK
Renan Serrano
Visto Bio, Brazil/ US
Alberto Rizzoli
V7 Labs, Italy/ Sweden/ UK
Read more about the TOP 5
THE PROCESS UNTIL 31ST DECEMBER 2020
Ideas are sought from everybody, and we are able to match these ideas with governments and global corporates and investors. They can be for-profit, or not-for-profit.
The Judges
We have an excellent range of judges, some able to provide more time than others. If you would like to join as a judge please send us your details and we’d be happy to talk.
The Idea
The scope of your idea can be far and wide, anything that abates the pandemic, we do not envisage there being any ‘silver bullets’.
Examples will come from engineering, business practices, behavioural change, scientific discovery applicable rather soon and frankly whatever else does the job. Perhaps there are really simple abatements we haven’t thought of yet, but you will.
The Incentives
We are able to connect with you with key decision makers, and investors.
If you would like to offer a prize please contact us and we can discuss.
Competitions are idea collectors are consistently effective in helping to solve problems, simple or complex problems. We can help you get your ideas to the right people, and we can introduce you to people who can join your team.
Timetable
Entry starts 1st May 2020 and ends 31st December 2020.
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Submission
Remember, your idea can be a product and or service. From past experience, the simpler the better. Please do not submit details that might compromise and unprotected intellectual property, in particular do not submit any trade secrets. See terms and conditions below for further information.
Please simply send an email to
halsall555 at gmail.com
The Judging Panel
Dr Meng-Han Kuok
Klaas De Boer
Dr Ferdinando Samaria
Dr. Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij
Darrell Mann
Eline Van Der Velden
Steve Leonard
Dr Elizabeth Surkovic
Wissam Farah
Dominic Hobson
Dr Andre Moreira
Stefan Poechhacker
Stefan Poechhacker has an MSc in computational finance from UCL. During Stefan’s time at UC Berkeley, he developed a keen interest in cryptocurrencies and became an active investor in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies leading to him delivering a lecture to UCL’s post-graduates Stefan worked at EY London leading a team of four to develop a blockchain AML transaction monitoring solution to identify and flag cryptocurrency transactions with suspicious activity. He has experience in building and backtesting systematic trading strategies in python which he acquired out of personal interest and at a London based energy hedge fund, before joining Bloomberg as an Account Manager where he specialized in Equity and Commodity markets. He is an advocate for quant driven solutions in the DACH region.
Professor Michael Mainelli
Professor Michael Mainelli co-founded Z/Yen, the City of London’s leading commercial think-tank and venture firm, in 1994 to promote societal advance through better finance and technology. A qualified accountant, securities professional, computer specialist and management consultant, educated at Harvard University and Trinity College Dublin, Michael gained his PhD at London School of Economics where he was also a Visiting Professor. Michael’s early scientific research in aerospace (rocket science) and computer graphics led to him starting Swiss companies in seismology. Michael served as a Director of Europe’s largest R&D organisation (DERA) leading to two privatisations.
Mike Halsall
Professor Yen Choo
Ezinne Uzo-Okoro
Claudia Olsson
Dr Anish Mohammed
Russell Buckley
Radiana Soh
Samantha Ghiotti
David Orban
David Orban is the Founder of Network Society Research and Managing Partner at Network Society Ventures. He is a faculty member and advisor at Singularity University, and he served as the Chairman of the Board of Humanity+. Mr. Orban’s past entrepreneurial accomplishments span several companies founded and grown over more than twenty years. He attended University of Milan, and University of Padua and studied Physics.
Stephen Markscheid
Leighton Vaughan Williams
Leighton Vaughan Williams is Professor of Economics and Finance. He is Head of Economics Research and Director of the Political Forecasting Unit at Nottingham Business School. Leighton’s main teaching is in the area of money, risk, forecasting, efficiency of markets and financial economics. Prior to joining Nottingham Trent University, Leighton was Lecturer in economics at the University of East Anglia. He has also served as Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of Management, Clark University, Massachusetts, USA.
Dave Lim
Dr Alex C. Y. Wong
Dr Con Keating
John Sharp
Julian Durant
Erik Postnieks
Erik Postnieks has been a professional investor since 1993 and has two decades of experience researching unique strategies for, developing, and successfully managing long/short equity, currency, and global macro hedge funds. He managed hedge funds in New York City from 1994 through 2010 and now is an Exempt Reporting Adviser in the State of California with Exolinear Capital Management, LLC. Erik earned a B.A. in Economics from Cornell University in 1988, with Distinction in All Subjects, and an MBA from The Amos Tuck School of Business Administration at Dartmouth College in 1993. Erik began his investment career at Bankers Trust Company (1993–1996), where he co-managed a $2 billion derivatives-based structured product portfolio. The unifying theme of Erik’s career has been an ability to identify market inefficiencies that have enabled him to produce average annual returns 22.5% greater than the S&P 500, net of fees. His hedge funds averaged 30% annual risk-adjusted returns (“alpha”) from 1997 to 2003, and roughly 8% average annual alpha from 2005 through 2010. Over his career to date, Erik has made his clients more than $150 million in alpha. He has a 13-year audited track record, of which 10 years were positive, 1 year was flat, and 2 years were negative. From 2011-present, Erik has worked as a Registered Investment Adviser on machine learning applications for stock news sentiment, ETF market anomalies, global macro strategies, and long-short equity based on the Exolinear concept. Erik believes the largest market anomaly in the market today is they underestimate the potential of companies that harness technologies with exponential growth characteristics, earnings surprises, high growth, and high efficiency in the use of assets. He believes investors are systematically overestimating the potential of stocks with “linear” growth characteristics: low tech, asset-heavy businesses that can only make small increases in productivity to drive down costs and who exhibit poor Environmental, Social, and Governance scores. Erik will soon launch a new hedge fund to exploit this market anomaly called “Exponential vs. Linear Partners, LP” and an offshore fund as demand warrants. Erik has been also been an angel investor for 15 years and has seen hundreds of pitches. He has been the founder and CEO of three successful businesses.
Richard Porter
Richard Porter is Director of Technology and Innovation at Zenzic, defining and overseeing a £200m portfolio of investments to make the UK the global centre for testing and development of self-driving technologies, building on existing and delivering new capabilities, both physical and virtual. Previously Richard was Director of Research and Innovation at Highways England, UK Research Liaison to US DoD, Security policy advisor and crisis manager at FCO. Richard is always interested in new technologies and encouraging collaboration to deliver technologies to market quickly and effectively.
Taseer Ahmad
Taseer Ahmad is a trans-disciplinary architect, designer, educator, and gelato-maker. Active in all aspects of practice: private, commercial, entrepreneurial and research. He was born near the Himalayas of Kashmiri origin, raised and educated in London at UCL and the Royal College of Art. Since the 1980s he has practiced in the UK and taught at schools of architecture and design in Oxford, London, Kent as well as in Europe and the USA. He was Director of Interior Architecture and Design at the University of Kent until 2010. His terrestrial architecture, interiors and design experience has been gained mainly in London-based practices and has spanned the mundane and the extraordinary: secret London interiors in Hampstead and Primrose Hill; private members clubs in the West End; international museums and galleries in Edinburgh and Delhi. He also practices as a multi and inter-disciplinary space architect and extreme environments designer and has collaborated in projects with ESA, ALENIA, NASA. From 1991 to 2001 Taseer was director of the Extreme Environments Laboratory, a design, teaching and research unit at Oxford School of Architecture at Oxford Brookes University. In 1993 he was awarded the Medal of Honour by the Government of Ukraine for extreme environments design for Chernobyl de-contamination. Current design research and project work is in the field of sensory environments and the human body’s personal architecture and ‘spatialisation’.
Bárbara Silva
Business Woman, CEO of BeST innovation, CEO of Singularity University Chile Summit President of HER GLOBAL IMPACT. Bárbara is a Catalyst of Innovation Ecosystems. She advises business leaders, corporations and governments in their innovation strategy and in the design of new business models to face the economy of disruption and to shape the industries of the future in Latin America and Europe. Bárbara is a business woman and her primary role is helping organizations to prepare to not be disrupted through the design of new business models and the attraction of international investment from developed markets to grow the industries of the future in Latin America through “BeSTinnovation”. She invested in Elibatt a lithium battery system integrated with internet of things and big data. Chile is one of the main producers of lithium of the world. In 2016, Bárbara was the one who introduced the first Singularity University Summit in Latin America a global conversation about exponential technologies and it impacts in companies, public policies and the society that is taking place in countries such as Denmark, Japan, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada, US, New Zealand and Australia. Recently, she was appointed as the representative for South America of the Stanford Research Institute (SRI International), a non profit research center that takes the most advanced R&D from the laboratory to the marketplace. Bárbara is on the Advisory Committee of Sofofa, Association of the main industries of Chile and the productivity commission of the Santiago Chamber of Commerce. She was the Vice-president of the Innovation Committee of Open Beauchef from Universidad de Chile. She loves to democratize the access of innovation tools to women, in 2012 she was the one who started the women in innovation movement in Chile and South America by connecting south american women with the knowledge and the network of successful women in Silicon Valley. After that she created “HER GLOBAL IMPACT”, her non for profit organization focuses on training and the acceleration of female entrepreneurs. She won the Young women innovator Award in the Asia Pacific Economic Forum in 2013 and was the first Latin American Woman invited to attend the G8 Youth Summit in 2013 in London. In 2014 was recognized as one of the 100 young leaders of Chile. A mentor, speaker and advocate in diversity integration and businesses with purpose, Bárbara brings a Latin American perspective in a global world, her work has been featured in CNN several times. Bárbara was born in Valparaíso, Chile, has a Bachelor of Social Sciences degree in Business Psychology and was honored by the UAI University with an Excellence Scholarship. She has a Master of Arts in Business Psychology and a Master of Arts in Innovation Management © Bárbara was the first Chilean woman who studied at Singularity University in 2012 and she got a scholarship from Heidi Roizen investor of the DFJ venture fund in Silicon Valley to attend the Draper University in 2014.She is currently an Adjunct Professor at UAI, the most important business school in Chile.
John Kermath
John Kermath has spent over 30 years in fund management, investment banking, and venture advisory; working closely in the last 18 years with emerging technology companies in their development. Previously John served 9 years as President of a multi-strategy hedge fund that had peaked at $4 billion in assets under his management. He joined the organization to address problems arising from heavy investor redemption requests and ultimately led the team that restructured the firm’s main funds in multiple steps, raising approximately $240 million to facilitate the effort. He subsequently took over management of the organization and fund portfolios with over $1 billion in residual holdings, largely private equity & venture in nature. He has served as a board member of a dozen portfolio companies and created over $260 million in new value for fund investors in settling long-standing litigation. Prior to this, John was advisor and investment banker to several technology ventures where he assisted in raising a $65 million private equity fund and co-managed a $250 million portfolio of fund interests for a major family office. Early in his career, he advised several NFL investor groups on acquisitions and financing. He also served as a board member and President of the Houston Private Equity Association. Mr. Kermath began his career at Citibank and Deutsche Bank and previously served in the U.S. Army. He is a graduate of Princeton University with a degree in Economics.
Irakli Beridze
Head, Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, United Nations, UNICRI. More than 20 years of experience in leading multilateral negotiations, developing stakeholder engagement programmes with governments, UN agencies, international organisations, think tanks, civil society, foundations, academia, private industry and other partners on an international level. Since 2014, Initiated and managed one of the first United Nations Programmes on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. Initiating and organizing number of high-level events at the United Nations General Assembly, and other international organizations. Finding synergies with traditional threats and risks as well as identifying solutions that AI can contribute to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Mr Beridze is advising governments and international organizations on numerous issues related to international security, scientific and technological developments, emerging technologies, innovation and disruptive potential of new technologies, particularly on the issue on crime prevention, criminal justice and security. He is a member of various of international task forces, including the World Economic Forum’s Global Artificial Intelligence Council, and the High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence of the European Commission. He is frequently lecturing and speaking on the subjects related to technological development, exponential technologies, artificial intelligence and robotics and international security. He has numerous publications in international journals and magazines and frequently quoted in media on the issues related to artificial intelligence. Irakli Beridze is an International Gender Champion supporting the IGC Panel Parity Pledge. He is also recipient of recognition on the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the OPCW in 2013.
Leila Pinto
Leila Pinto’s professional career developed in the Financial/Banking Industry at different Financial Institutions in Spain, the United States, Panama, Guatemala, Colombia and Ecuador. For more than fourteen years she led Private Banking teams and managed wealth management portfolios for top International banks such as Deutsche Bank, Banco Sabadell, Lloyds TSB Bank and Grupo IF (US Group Bank) where she was the Head of the International Area. She currently owns a financial advisory boutique firm whose main objective is to advise high net worth families in Latin America. Leila’s academic career started in 2010 when she began teaching Corporate Finance and Advanced Financial Management at IE Business School. Leila is a full-time teaching Fellow UCL School of Management. In addition she is the Programme Director for the MSc Finance at the School of Management. Leila holds a Degree in Business Administration, an MBA and a Masters in International Relations Degree.
Tongxiang Fan
Professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University is very interested in the researches on Functional Metal Matrix Composites, Smart Meta-materials and Superstructures, Bio-inspired and Biomimetic Materials. Dr. Tongxiang Fan was born in Shandong, china and graduated from Shandong University with a bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree in Materials Science and Engineering in 1993 and 1996, respectively. He later received a Ph.D. degree in State Key Lab of Metal Matrix Composites, Shanghai Jiaotong University in 1999. From 1998 to 2001, he worked in Osaka University as a visiting scholar and Japan Science and Technology Agency as STA Fellowship award winner, respectively. After returning to School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiaotong University, he became an associate professor in 2001 and a full professor in 2006. His research currently includes Functional Metal Matrix Composites, Bio-inspired and Biomimetic Materials, Smart Meta-materials and Superstructures. Tongxiang Fan received many awards for his contributions to the development of new materials, including STA Fellowship( Japan, 2000), Excellent Young Teachers Program (Ministry of Education, 2002), Fok Ying Tung Foundation (Hongkong, 2003), Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (Ministry of Education, 2004), Shanghai Rising-Star Program (Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality, 2005), First Class Prize in Natural Science (Shanghai Municipality, 2014 and 2007), Dawn Scholar (Shanghai Education Committee, 2008), Distinguished Young Scholars (NSFC, 2014), National Natural Science Award (CPG, 2015), Leading scientists, engineers and innovators( National Ten Thousands Plan, 2017) and National Millions of Leading Engineering Talents (MOHRSS, 2017). His works were featured as cover stories in many international journals such as Advanced Materials, Journal of Materials Chemistry, and also selected as HOT Papers by Progress in Materials Science, Chemistry of Materials, Nanotechnology, and also highlighted in NPG Asia Materials, Nature China, ACS News, New Scientist, BBC Knowledge Magazine, Photonics Spectrum Magazine, Nanowerk, Biomass Journal, Science Daily, Physorg.com, Discovery Channel News and more.
Stefano Fontana
Innovation & Change at Fontana Group, a world leading company which operates in the automotive industry’s luxury segment with R&D, engineering, dies construction, stamping and assembly super-cars lightweight materials bodies. Before joining Fontana Group, Stefano (born in Italy and adopted by the USA) was immerse among successful and unsuccessful projects in a variety of industry; entertainment, tech, pet health/food to cite some. Stefano literally possess a bright vision of the future, he is a tech-savvy innovator, endless learner, and passionate entrepreneur and intrapreneur.
Lotte Schou-Zibell
Lotte Schou-Zibell Regional Director Pacific Liaison and Coordination Office Asian Development Bank
Lotte is focusing on expanding and further developing the private and finance sectors in the Pacific sub-region as well as improving the quality, reliability, and availability of critical infrastructure in both rural and urban areas to boost economic growth, create jobs, and provide access to public services.
Prior to her current position, Lotte was Chief of Finance Sector Group of the Sustainable Development and Climate Change Department. She provided technical leadership on inclusive finance, finance sector development, and infrastructure finance; and in developing sector policies, strategies, operational plans, and directional papers. She leads innovative pilot projects using digital technologies. Prior to joining ADB, she was Director for International Economic Policy at the Swedish Ministry of Finance, a financial supervision and regulation expert at the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority and central bank, and an IMF consultant.
Dennis M. Bushnell
Dennis M. Bushnell is a NASA scientist and lecturer. As chief scientist at NASA Langley Research Center, he is responsible for technical oversight and advanced program formulation. His work is focused mainly on new approaches to environmental issues, in particular to climate issues. Bushnell has received numerous awards for his work. Bushnell has promoted research at NASA into LENR. Bushnell obtained his M.E. degree from the University of Connecticut in 1963 and his M.S.degree from the University of Virginia in 1967, both in the field of Mechanical Engineering.
Dinesh Singh
With over 20 years of marketing, business development and channel sales experience; Dinesh has established himself as a marketer with a penchant for both quantitative and qualitative aspects of the profession.
A University of Oregon graduate with majors in Finance and Marketing, in 2017 he received Certificate New Media Marketing for the Hospitality Professional from Cornell University.
As the Membership Director of The National University of Singapore Society – Singapore’s Premier Graduate Club, his core responsibilities, include overseeing both the subscription revenue and membership growth of by constantly developing greater membership value and driving membership campaigns.
Beryl Chavez Li
Beryl Chavez Li is currently a Business Owner at Unionbank of the Philippines’ innovation arm, UBX, where she product owns Biddit.ph. She is also the Innovation officer at Studex, an animal conservation platform, that aims to clone and preserve endangered species like Sudan, the last male white rhino.
Beryl was the founding CEO of asset token platform, CapchainX. She was a founding team member and Entrepreneur In Residence at Coins.ph, a leading crypto exchange and blockchain payments startup in Asia that has recently been acquired by GoJEk. Her experiences include backtesting trading algorithms at BlackRock London as an FX Quants Consultant as part of her GCP at Cambridge and authoring the Philippine Roadmap for Digital Startups, a framework in building the Philippine startup ecosystem, as Senior Consultant at the Department of ICT. She started her career in early stage Venture Capital in Shanghai in 2012.
Beryl holds a Master of Finance degree from Cambridge University where she sat as President of the Cambridge University Cryptocurrency Society. She attended Stanford University earning an International Management Certificate during the summer quarter and earned her bachelors in International Business, Finance and Economics at Manchester University.
Derwen Hinds
Derwen Hinds is an independent Strategic Technical Advisor in Future and Emerging Technologies, having recently spent 17 years in the National Security Sector of Government as initially a Senior Information Assurance Consultant across HMG and the last 10 years in the impact analysis of future and emerging technologies. Derwen has participated in 5 Government Chief Scientific Advisor’s Blackett Reviews, advise on behalf of National Security several programmes including the UK National Quantum Technologies Programme and represented National Security on several Public Sector and Academic committees and boards. Prior to joining the Civil Service, Derwen spent 28 years in Industry including the computing capability for a large aerospace engineering group and the Nuclear side of the UK Electricity Generation industry as an intra/inter network designer and Technology Strategist. Derwen originally qualified as a Mechanical and Production engineer, specialising in feedback Control Systems and Metallurgy before moving into commercial computer programming, engineering systems design and Production Control Systems design and implementation. His varied and multi-disciplinary experiences bring a wealth of perspectives. Derwen is a Fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET), an Honorary Professor at STEaPP, UCL and an Honorary Principal Research Fellow at ISST, Imperial College.
Charles Delingpole
Charles Delingpole is CEO of ComplyAdvantage, a technology company focused on wiping out financial crime using Machine Learning. As CEO, Charles leads the product development and growth of the company. His passion for the issue came from his time as the MLRO of a previous startup he founded when he realized the ubiquitous inefficiency concerning money laundering processes. Over 99% of money laundering is successful, ComplyAdvantage is working to stop it completely. Founded in 2014, ComplyAdvantage works with over 500 enterprise clients across 75 countries. Backed by Index Ventures and Balderton Capital, ComplyAdvantage has four global hubs in London, New York, Cluj-Napoca, and Singapore. Charles set up his first company, The Student Room Group, now the world’s largest student discussion forum when he was 16. After completing his MA in Politics at Trinity College Cambridge, and then an MSc in Management, Strategy, and Finance from the LSE, he became an associate at J.P. Morgan Cazenove.
Ting Zhang
Ting Zhang has 25+ years experience of international business, trade and investment with a China focus. Ting first came to Cambridge to study, and then in 2001 Ting left her career as a banker to set up a China specialist consultancy, advising hi-tech SMEs, FTSE100 corporates, universities, government agencies, European VC Funds, and financial institutions in Wall Street.
In 2017, Ting launched Crayfish.io, the first online platform dedicated to cross-border collaborations with China, and in September 2019 she went on to launch Crayfish Accelerator, a programme providing access to early stage equity funding and business support services to enter the Chinese market. Ting has mentored many budding entrepreneurs and helped them to better prepare for the business challenges ahead.
Dr Louise Beaumont
Dr Louise Beaumont works with legislators and regulators to create disruption, with corporates to cope with disruption, and with start-ups to exploit disruption – with open and accessible data as the guiding principle.
Dr Rolf Nagel
Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Munich Venture Partners
Dr Rolf P. Nagel is a German citizen. He holds a Ph.D. in Business Economics from the University of Cologne and a Master’s Degree (Diplom-Kfm.) from the WHU Koblenz, Germany. While completing his Ph.D., he was awarded a research scholarship at the MIT Sloan School of Management in Cambridge, USA.
Munich Venture Partners, which he co-founded in 2004 is a leading high-technology, research-to-business-transfer venture fund investing in innovative start-up companies, mainly in the European Union, with a focus on IT and Energy-Clean Tech. Munich Venture Partners has secured financial commitments from a wide range of institutional, private and philanthropic investors in the EU and the USA. MVP has recently achieved notable exits of Sonnen Battery (acquired by Shell Oil), Relayr IoT-Software (MunichRE) or Cobi (Bosch).
Currently, Dr Nagel is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Novihum Technologies GmbH, a Director of Silicon Line GmbH, in addition to serving as Managing Partner of Munich Venture Partners. Furthermore he is on the Governing Board of the EIT European Institute of Innovation and Technology, a body of the EU Commission.
Prior to founding Munich Venture Partners, he was an Investment Manager and Partner of SVM Star Ventures Management from 1994 to 2004 in the Munich office. He managed international investments in IT (e.g. Ciena, RF Micro Devices), energy (e.g. Capstone) and medical companies (e.g. Medigene), which were successfully taken public on the NASDAQ New York or on the Stock Exchange Frankfurt.
Marco Gualtieri
Marco Gualtieri is an entrepreneur born in Milan in October 1970. He has a degree from the University of Pavia in Economics and Business Administration.
He is the Founder and Chairman of Seeds&Chips that includes the world-renowned go-to event on Food Innovation and sustainable development The Global Food Innovation Summit.
Since 2015, Seeds&Chips’s mission has been to bring innovators from around the world together to find practical solutions through collaboration and cooperation. The event in fact brings together hundreds of startups, companies, universities, institutions, investors, accelerators and incubators, opinion leaders and policy makers and students from all over the world.
In 2017, the 44th President of the United States Barack Obama delivered inspiring remarks at the The Global Innovation Summit in his first speech after the end of his mandate.
During its 5th edition in 2019 the Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte participated as a keynote speaker.
Launching this September its new flagship event in Melbourne, Australia, Seeds&Chips is expanding also in Africa, with another signature event in Kigali, Rwanda, in 2020.
Seeds&Chips continues to unite thought leadership to concrete solutions in an open platform that has revolutionized the way companies discuss our food system. Furthermore, Gualtieri’s vision and approach to food has appointed him several awards throughout the years.
He is an internationally recognized expert and speaker, participant and key player of several worldwide Food Tanks, Italy’s Food Ambassador and board member of several companies and associations that focus on the future of food and sustainability.
Since 2004, Marco is co-founder and board member of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights in Europe.
In 2019 he founded Sustain&Ability, a sister company of Seeds&Chips. Also, he created the project Goals on Tour, a promotional campaign to create awareness around the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in partnership with several UN Agencies such as UNIDO, FAO, UNECE, IFAD and WFP.
Recently together with the Director General of the UN Food and Agricolture Organization, José Graziano da Silva, he signed a Memorandum of Understanding between Seeds&Chips and FAO, to promote food innovation and education, with the objective to strengthen youth engagement and awareness-raising initiatives in order to fight hunger and malnutrition and achieve sustainable development.
He is International Affairs Delegate for sustainability for the Agency for the Economic Development of the Republic of San Marino.
He is also known as the founder of TicketOne in 1996, the first and leading e-commerce ticketing platform in Italy as well as co-founder of Netcomm, Italy’s largest e-commerce association.
Marco Gualtieri has been awarded in 2018 the “Sustainable Development and Innovation Award” by the French and Italian Chamber of Commerce.
Furthermore, he has won the Food Community Award as “Best Entrepreneur in the Food Area”.
Chiara Giovenzana
Chiara Giovenzana is a scientist (PhD in Biotech), an entrepreneur and an investor. She co-founded and led a biotech startup and different companies and organizations focused on innovation. She’s a a TEDx speaker, a Fulbright fellow and a Singularity university alumna. She is also a partner of two VC funds, a business angel and a mentor at Endeavor.
The Prize as issued to BotMD.io
Executive Programme

How you can help
Submissions from the first Pandemic Challenge varied widely, from simple workable ideas to incredibly complicated proposals requiring big money to get going. We heard from people on every continent, with hot spots in Singapore, the UK, South America, Silicon Valley, and Eastern Europe. Ages ranges from 17 years, to 82 years, from business people, academics, government including military employees, and school children. If you have ideas and energy, don’t let all that go to waste. Together we can end this pandemic.