Science innovators got a challenge today as the Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science announced a new innovation fellowship it will offer starting in 2016. Two will be offered the first year: one for an invention to restore coral reefs and the other to help reduce people’s exposure to carcinogens.
The winner will get $100,000 to support the 12- to 18-month fellowship.
The money is part of a $1 million gift from Ted Caplow, CEO of Caplow Applied Science or CappSci, who has served various roles at the science museum in the past three years.
CappSci runs other fellowship and grant competitions for innovators to come up with solutions to various global problems like child mortality and ecological sustainability.
As the applications begin to roll in, Caplow says he is most excited about the new ideas that will come to light.
“But, I’m excited to see what we haven’t found what we don’t know about, ideas that come from completely outside the box,” he says.
The idea is fellows will become figures in the new science museum, working out of the new Innovation Center to encourage interactions between museum goers and the fellows. The fellows will also chronicle their efforts, offering transparency in the sometimes-mysterious process of developing new technology.
“Our hope is that [the fellows] will form attachments and associations, whether professional relationships, personal relationships [or] business relationships around that technology,” explains Caplow, “so that these technologies will become rooted and embedded in Miami, in South Florida, and will grow here and contribute to the tech ecosystem.”
The applications are already open to the public and will go through several rounds of culling those down to three finalists who will present their idea to local students. The two winners will be picked by the end of the year.
