Over $1,000,000 in prizes for COVID-19 work from Emergent Ventures
Tyler Cowen’s fund Emergent Ventures is offering:
$500k, second prize $200k, for Best effort to find a good treatment rapidly
$100k for Best blog or social media tracking/analysis of the virus
$100k for Best innovation in social distancing
$100k for Most important innovation or improvement for India
$50k for Best investigative journalism on coronavirus
$50k for Best (justified) coronavirus policy writing
Side note: In the post, Tyler explains why prizes are better than grants in this situation: “The case for prizes is stronger when you don’t know who is likely to make the breakthrough, you value the final output more than the process, there is an urgency to solutions (talent development is too slow), success is relatively easy to define, and efforts and investments are likely to be undercompensated.”
I’m very glad to see this. Tyler’s past grants have shown good judgment, and a level of risk tolerance unusual for a philanthropist. For people who need seed funding rather than retrospective prizes, also note that “you still can propose a coronavirus-related project through normal [Emergent Ventures] channels, with discretionary amounts to be awarded as grants per usual procedures.”