2021-22 Laureates

We need more accurate ways of measuring greenhouse gas emissions around the world in real time so we can work together to stop climate change.

Brother and sister Kshitij and Abhilasha combined their different skills to start Blue Sky Analytics.

Blue Sky Analytics is a climate tech startup that analyzes satellite data using AI to provide high-resolution and near-real time datasets on environmental and climate parameters, helping organizations, companies, communities and countries manage their climate risk and obtain net-zero goals.

Blue Sky Analytics provides real-time environmental monitoring that organizations around the world can use to hold each other accountable and reduce emissions.

To prevent forest fires caused by electrical equipment, each section of a power grid has to be inspected. Drones and helicopters can fly along power lines to take photographs of the equipment, but analyzing this data manually can take months, and that delay can be the difference between safety and catastrophe.

Kaitlyn and Vik come from very different backgrounds but were both very interested in energy and the environment. They met in a class in college, and partnered together to form Buzz Solutions.

Buzz Solutions uses artificial Intelligence to detect anomalies and damage in power lines, allowing utility companies to quickly address issues and prevent blackouts and forest fires.

Buzz Solutions uses computer vision technology that has helped power utilities save over 50% of cost and time to analyze data. This improves the ease and time efficiency of maintenance efforts, thus helping prevent wildfires, power outages, and other climate change effects on the physical infrastructure of the grid.

Crowdsourcing helps people get first-hand information quickly, empowering them to share more of what’s happening around them. However, without a way to collect individual posts in real-time, combine them into helpful categories and visualize them in maps and charts, all that data doesn’t provide a clear picture of what’s really happening.

Angela grew up in Nairobi, Kenya, studying information technology as one of the few women in her classes. While in college, there was an important election that people knew had been rigged, and a group of technologists created a platform for people to anonymously send messages about what was happening around them. Angela joined this platform, Ushahidi, as a junior software developer and eventually worked her way up to executive director.

The Ushahidi platform helps global citizens strengthen their communities and enact social change through access to data and technology. Users are empowered to rapidly and purposefully gather, visualize, analyze, respond and act on data and information from multiple sources.

Ushahidi has been used more than 200,000 times in over 160 countries, empowering people to raise their voice and fight for change.

Many scientists believe we are in the midst of a sixth extinction event, caused by humans. We have to identify and track endangered species more quickly so we can protect them.

Jason saw his first whale shark while scuba diving in Djibouti, and the next year, he went on another whale shark expedition in Baja, California, where he learned about mark-recapture from a biologist. The idea for Wild Me formed as Jason wondered if there was a way to use photographic data to tag a whale shark.

Wild Me’s technology blends structured wildlife research with artificial intelligence, community input and computer vision to speed population analysis of animal species around the globe and develop new insights to bring an end to extinction, through the contributions of hobbyists and scientists.

Wild Me is currently studying 63 animal species, and there have been more than 6 million photos submitted by wildlife photographers, tourists, scuba divers, and scientists of all ages. In the last 10 years, their research was able to get whale sharks listed as endangered on the IUCN red list.