Farmlab Public SalonPeter DiamandisOf the X PRIZE FoundationFriday, November 2, 2007 @ NoonFree-of-Charge

The Prize is Right: Using X PRIZEs to Benefit Humanity

About the Salon

Innovation prizes are not a new idea – it was the $25,000 Orteig Prize that lured Charles Lindbergh across the Atlantic back in 1927.

Come join a discussion on how the X PRIZE Foundation is reviving an old idea to address the major challenges of the modern world.

X PRIZEs are most effective where progress is blocked and where market forces, government, and non-profits cannot readily solve a problem. They mobilize individuals, companies and organizations across all boundaries to think creatively about complex problems and achieve breakthroughs. Thanks to the original $10 million Ansari X PRIZE for suborbital spaceflight, Sir Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos and others are actively creating a personal spaceflight industry.

The X PRIZE Foundation intends to be a similar catalyst for breakthroughs in many other sectors including health, energy/environment, education and international development through entrepreneurship.

About the Salon Presenter

Peter H. Diamandis, M.D., is the Chairman & CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation (www.xprize.org), which awarded the $10,000 Ansari X PRiZE for private spaceflight. Diamandis is now focused on building the X PRIZE Foundation into a world-class prize institute whose mission is to bring about radical breakthroghs for the benefit of humanity. The X PRIZE is now developing X PRIZEs in fields such as Genomics, Automotive, Education, Medicine, Energy, and Social arenas.

Diamandis is an international leader in the commercial space arena, having founded and run many of the leading entrepreneurial companies in this sector. Diamandis also serves as the CEO of Zero Gravity Corporation (www.gozerog.com) a commercial space company developing private, FAA-certified parabolic flight Boeing 727-200 aircraft. He is the Chairman & Co-Founder of the Rocket Racing League (www.rocketracingleague.com). Diamandis is a co-founder and Director of Space Adventures (www.spaceadventures.com), the company which brokered the launches of four private citizens to the International Space Station.

In 1987, Diamandis co-founded the International Space University (ISU) (www.isunet.edu) where he served as the University's first managing director. Today he serves as a Trustee of the $30M ISU that is based in Strasbourg, France. Prior to ISU, Diamandis served as Chairman of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) an organization he founded at MIT in 1980. SEDS is the world's largest student pro space organization.

Diamandis attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he received his undergraduate degree in molecular genetics and graduate degree in aerospace engineering. After MIT he attended Harvard Medical School where he received his M.D. In 2005 he was also awarded an honorary Doctorate from the International Space University.

He is the winner of the 2006 (innagural) Heinlein Award, the 2006 Lindbergh Award, the 2006 Wired RAVE Award, the Konstantine Tsiolkovsky Award, twice the winner of the Aviation & Space Technology Laurel, and the 2003 World Technology Award for Space. In 8th grade, while living in New York, Dr. Diamandis won first place in the Estes motor design contest.

Diamandis' mission is to open the space frontier for humanity. His personal motto is: "The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself!"