Transvision 2007 - Chicago, June 23rd - 26th
Peter Diamandis, M.D.
Chairman & Founder,
X Prize Foundation
http://www.xprize.org/
Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, a pioneer and leader in the commercial space arena, is on a mission to spur innovation by creating contests which get entrepreneurial innovators and inventors to help create and break-open new markets and thinking. Peter says we can't wait for the government to fund the right things properly or quick enough. As the Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation (http://www.xprize.org/), Peter is changing the way the world thinks about its problems and their solutions. The X PRIZE Foundation sees the potential in competition. He believes that challenges properly framed and inspired can unleash progress against the seemingly intractable grand challenges of our time. His first prize, the ANSARI X PRIZE was a $10M private space flight competition that changed the way the world thinks about space. His goal is to now use his proactive prize model to enable heroes and technological breakthroughs in other areas including energy, the environment, genomics, nanotechnology, medicine and in the social arena.
He is the Chairman & Co-Founder of the Rocket Racing League, and serves as the CEO of Zero Gravity Corporation, a commercial space company developing private, FAA-certified parabolic flight utilize Boeing 727-200 aircraft. Diamandis is a co-founder of Space Adventures, Inc. (http://www.spaceadventures.com/), the company which brokered Dennis Tito and Mark Shuttleworth's flight to the International Space Station.
In 1987, Diamandis co-Founded the International Space University (ISU) (http://www.isunet.edu/) where he served as the University’s first managing director. Today he serves as a Trustee of the $30M ISU that is based in Strasbourg, France. Prior to ISU, Diamandis served as Chairman of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) an organization he founded at MIT in 1980. SEDS is the world’s largest student pro space organization.
Dr. Diamandis attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he received his undergraduate degree in molecular genetics and graduate degree in aerospace engineering. After MIT he attended Harvard Medical School where he received his M.D. In 2005 he has was also awarded an honorary Doctorate from the International Space University.
He is the winner of the Konstantine Tsiolkovsky Award, twice the winner of the Aviation & Space Technology Laurel, and the 2003 World Technology Award for Space. In 8th grade, while living in New York, Dr. Diamandis won first place in the Estes rocket design contest.
Diamandis’ mission is to open the space frontier for humanity. His personal motto is: "The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself!"
