Deadline: 8-Dec-22
The Stanford Center on Longevity Design Challenge is now open for applications to encourage students to design products and services to improve well-being across the lifespan.
In its tenth year, the Challenge is focused on the optimization of health span – the period of life spent in good health, free from chronic diseases and disabilities.
The Stanford Center on Longevity Design Challenge offers over $20K in cash prizes and free entrepreneur mentorship in a competition open to all university students around the world who want to design products and services which optimize long life for them all.
Longevity Design Challenge Goals
- Create well-designed, practical solutions that improve well-being across the lifespan
- Encourage a new generation of students to become knowledgeable about issues associated with long lives
- Provide promising designers with a path to drive change in the world
Theme
- “Optimizing Health Span: Living Well at Every Age”
- The near-doubling of human life spans throughout much of the world during the 20th century is one of the greatest achievements in human history. A key challenge now is to ensure that the quality of those added years keeps pace with dramatic increases in the length of life. They must develop new ways to align life spans with health spans, defined as the period people remain healthy, mobile, and mentally sharp, unimpeded by chronic pain, illness, or disability. The focus of the 10th annual Stanford Center on Longevity Design Challenge is to create solutions that optimize health spans and promote longevity.
- SCL’s New Map of Life project identifies opportunities to improve health spans with interventions at all stages of life, from childhood to old age. For example, research in The New Map of Life shows that physical activity, quality sleep, and positive social connections, as well as access to nutritious food, green space, clean water, and unpolluted air all contribute to a person’s health span, including their mental health.
- The 2023 Stanford Center on Longevity Design Challenge invites student designers to create solutions that contribute towards the optimization of health span at any age. They especially welcome designs that increase the health spans of people in disadvantaged circumstances, which may include poverty, food, housing, or climate insecurity.
- Examples of designs include (but are not limited to) solutions that:
- Increase physical activity
- Improve diet
- Improve sleep
- Reduce chronic disease
- Improve mental health
- Enhance social connection
Award Information
- Top winners receive cash prizes of $10,000 (1st place), $5,000 (2nd place), $2,000 (3rd place).
- Finalists receive a $1,000 cash prize and mentorship from industry experts and researchers.
Eligibility Criteria
- The challenge is open to teams of 1-5 students enrolled during the 2022-2023 academic year, attending any accredited university or college globally. Each team must have at least one full-time student and if the team is selected as a Finalist, only students may present.
Judging Criteria
- The Challenge will be judged by experts in design and technology including carefully selected academics with expertise on the topic; executives from technology and consumer goods firms; venture capitalists; and senior representatives from related mission-driven organizations.
For more information, visit https://longevity.stanford.edu/design-challenge/