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X PRIZE Lab @ MIT

The X PRIZE Lab@MIT is the result of a partnership between the X PRIZE Foundation and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The goal is to engage leading thinkers in helping recognize areas that are ripe for breakthrough innovation. MIT students explore the strengths of prize philanthropy with academic rigor and the excitement of the X PRIZE model is used as an anchor for engaging youth in the world’s biggest challenges.

Students participate in a semester-long lab researching and dissecting the prize philanthropy model. The students produce concepts for a new X PRIZE in one of our five target areas: education, exploration, energy and environment, global entrepreneurship or life sciences. At the end of the class, students present their ideas to senior Foundation leadership and members of our Board of Trustees.

The Winter/Spring semester class focused on healthcare challenges in the developing world. Students presented their final ideas to X PRIZE Founder Dr. Peter Diamandis, renowned inventor and X PRIZE Board of Trustee Dean Kamen, Jeff Shames and others on May 9th. The Fall semester will focus on challenges in the areas of energy and the environment.

You can hear Peter Diamandis talk about the X PRIZE Lab @ MIT here.

Dr. Erika Wagner

Dr. Erika Wagner joined the X PRIZE Lab @ MIT initiative as the project’s founding Executive Director. She has been at the core of the X PRIZE Lab @ MIT initiatives, overseeing the first offering of the X PRIZE Grand Challenges course, supporting networking efforts for the X PRIZE Foundation across the university and throughout the greater Boston area, and spearheading strategic planning efforts for the Lab.

Dr. Wagner has more than six years of project management experience within MIT, having served as Science Director and Executive Director of the Mars Gravity Biosatellite Program, a multi-university spacecraft development initiative to investigate the physiological effects of reduced gravity.

Her interdisciplinary academic background includes a bachelor’s in Biomedical Engineering from Vanderbilt University, a master’s in Aeronautics & Astronautics from MIT, and a PhD in Bioastronautics from the Harvard/MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology.