Participants sought for UB’s first World’s Challenge Challenge

Know a globally minded student?

This year, for the first time, UB is inviting students to take part in the World’s Challenge Challenge, an international contest in which entrants compete for 30,000 Canadian dollars by proposing solutions to pressing world challenges.

In teams of three, students are asked to identify an issue facing humanity today (food security, inequality, energy consumption, etc.) and propose a way to fix that problem.

Teams selected to take part in the competition will have four weeks to develop their concept and deliver their solution in 5-to-7-minute presentation to a panel of UB faculty and administrators. After two rounds of campus presentations this winter, the winner will represent UB at the final contest at Western University in London, Ontario, where students from several countries will compete for cash prizes to advance projects.

Teams must act quickly to participate. Submissions are due via UBLinked by Nov. 4, and the first round of presentations is scheduled for Dec. 2. Details and an application are available at Transcending Borders UB at UBLinked.

“We hope that faculty and staff will actively encourage students to participate,” says co-organizer Chris Bragdon, an international student adviser and coordinator for student engagement with UB’s International Student and Scholar Services (ISSS). “I have already heard from several faculty who are advertising the challenge to their majors as a way to promote interdisciplinary research and advance discipline-related issues.”

UB’s participation in the contest is sponsored by the Office of International Education and UB’s Blackstone LaunchPad, a campus-based experiential entrepreneurship program open to students, alumni, staff and faculty offering coaching, ideation and venture creation support.

The grand prize is 30,000 Canadian dollars, about $22,000 in U.S. currency.