Blue Sky Bio Competition by SynBioBeta SF 2015
This year, SynBioBeta is hosting a special event, the Blue Sky Competition, at the San Francisco SynBioBeta conference, held on November 4th, 2015 at the Mission Bay Conference Center.
As passionate supporters of the development synthetic biology in industry, SynBioBeta and Blue Sky Competition, with the help of other generous sponsors, is hoping to give people the opportunity to compete for over $500k in prizes. Applicants can be from anywhere in current startups, industry or academia, as long as they apply here by October 2nd, 2015. A panel of judges prior to the event will then review all applications and three candidates will be picked to move onto the live round in November during the SynBioBeta conference.
During the event, the final three will pitch their ideas on stage and the audience will vote to decide the winner.
A variety of prizes are up for grabs from several sponsoring organizations, including $100k in Synthetic DNA from Twist Bioscience, $100k in outsourced experiments from Science Exchange, $78k in start up grants and lab space at Imperial College London from SynbiCITE, $120k in Cloud Computing from Microsoft, and many more.
The idea is to provide inspiring minds with the chance to get extra resources to fund their projects and cultivate the bioeconomy. According to John Cumbers, Founder of SynBioBeta, “What makes this competition exciting is that it’s positioned to truly help facilitate innovators in the synthetic biology industry… The contest is meant to help bring big ideas to fruition that might not be funded elsewhere.”
About SynBioBeta
SynBioBeta is a community made of up entrepreneurs, investors and policymakers devoted to the responsible growth of synthetic biology in industry. Each year, they conduct international conferences and events, specifically SynBioBeta in San Francisco, usually in the fall and SynBioBeta in London, usually in the spring. These conferences offer the entire synthetic biology community to meet with bright minds who can together help build and shape the bioeconomy.
Last year, PLOS Synbio had special coverage of the SynBioBeta conference by Jean Peccoud, and you can read more about this here.