Latest News

Autonomous Contenders Vie for the XPrize Foundation’s $10 Million Rainforest Competition

For College of Science Assistant Professor Julie Allen and her teammates on Team Waponi, winning the grand prize is secondary to preserving the planet’s vanishing rainforest ecosystem.

What is the rainforest worth? Six Arizona State University researchers are part of a team that’s creating a new way to measure rainforest biodiversity in the $10 million XPRIZE Foundation competition. The group, called Team Waponi, is one of six finalist teams in the competition.

A research team based out of Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction wants to know what one square kilometer of rainforest is worth. Finding out the answer could be worth $10 million to them.

NJIT biology professor Eric Fortune and a team of scientists, known as “Team Waponi”, have reached the final stage of the five-year, $10M XPRIZE Rainforest Competition.

Over the course of four weeks this summer, a motley crew of biologists, engineers, entrepreneurs and programmers gathered at predetermined sites within Windsor Nature Park, a 185-acre tropical rainforest located in the heart of Singapore. They’d traveled from all over the world to participate in a one-of-a-kind competition hosted by the XPRIZE Foundation, in which 13 teams would have three days to identify as many organisms within the forest as possible.

“When a hectare of rainforest was destroyed in 1990 we had very little way of communicating that to the public, but today the measurement is much better,” he said.

The XPRIZE Rainforest competition focuses on precisely that. Competitors are working to come up with technologies able to survey 100 hectares (a hectare being about two and a half acres) of tropical rainforest in 24 hours and produce impactful insights within 48 hours. Team members are bringing expertise in areas such as biology, DNA analysis, use of drones, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Several faculty members at the University of Nevada, Reno’s Hitchcock Center for Chemical Ecology are part of Team Waponi, a team of scientists participating in the XPRIZE Rainforest competition.

The Ministry of Development, Industry and Commerce (MDIC) signed today (August 25) a partnership agreement with XPRIZE Foundation, so that the XPRIZE Rainforest finals will be held in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, in the state of Amazonas, in mid-2024. The prize is aimed at developing new technologies for mapping the biodiversity of the world's tropical forests.

Recently, XPRIZE announced 6 finalists for its $10,000,000 Rainforest competition to develop new biodiversity assessment technologies, all featuring the use of UAV technology and drones to improve scientific research and conservation in these increasingly endangered ecosystems.

SINGAPORE - Like putting a swab into the nose to detect Covid-19, a “swab” of the forest can reveal much about the myriad of flora and fauna there.

A science team led by a Colorado Mesa University professor and including other CMU faculty and students continues to enjoy success in an international competition where the winners will include not just competitors but the world’s threatened tropical rainforests and the creatures that inhabit them.

Conservation technologies like drones, remote sensing and machine learning have a massive role to play in aiding the work of conservation scientists and helping policymakers devise better-informed decisions about where and how to protect biodiversity. The XPRIZE Foundation knows this, which is why it started a five-year-long competition to come up with technologies that can automate and accelerate the assessment of rainforest biodiversity.

Six teams advance in $10,000,000 competition to measure biodiversity and produce meaningful insights to benefit rainforest ecosystems and local communities

SINGAPORE — Macaques look on from trees as a round of applause breaks out.

After repeated attempts, a team has managed to fly a drone and drop a sensor platform on a tree canopy. It will stay there all night to gather the sounds of wildlife in the forest.

Professor of Biology Thomas Walla, PhD, leads 25-person team competing in a global competition with a $10 million prize

A U.S.-based team of scientists joined by NJIT biologist Eric Fortune is inching closer to the $10 million XPRIZE Rainforest Competition’s grand prize for improving our understanding of rainforest ecosystems, having recently been named semifinalists.

Representing Grand Junction, CO as one of the 15 XPRIZE Rainforest semifinalist teams is Team Waponi!. The team members have worked together and with indigenous groups to discover new species of insects and plants in the Amazon for several decades.