TED Prize

Google awards $2 million to the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS)

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From the TED Prize blog: Congratulations to the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) and 2008 TED Prize winner Neil Turok on winning $2 million in funding from Google’s Project 10^100. Project 10^100 (10 to the 100th power) was a call for ideas to divide a $10 million fund into five pieces that would help as many people as possible around the world. AIMS’ piece of the prize will be used to expand its network of science and math academies that promote graduate-level study in Africa.

Some 150,000 ideas were submitted to Project 10^100, then narrowed down to 16 finalist ideas. Over the past 12 months, Google reviewed concrete proposals to tackle those ideas, which resulted in the five winners.

Other winners include the wonderful Khan Academy, a network of educational video; the FIRST robotics challenge (led by TEDTalks star Dean Kamen); Public.Resource.org, which works to make governmnt transparent; and the Schweeb monorail concept.