COVID-19 Innovation Challenge Submission Criteria
When crafting your proposal, you don’t have to follow a template but you have to be able to clearly answer the specific questions our competition judges will be considering. For more specific information on the requirements of each type of Challenge please visit the Challenge homepage. Your completed application will consist of the proposal and your video of up to 90 seconds describing your proposal and how it will meet the Challenge. Our judges will evaluate your project on three key criteria:
- Innovation: We define innovation as a transformative solution to a KAUST community problem or issue. Your innovation can be a product, a process, a technology, a market-based solution, or a service that is either entirely new or is being used in a novel and beneficial way. Innovation creates value and new opportunities for our community and offers benefits that are an improvement on previous efforts. Tell us what other solutions have been tried and how your project differs from these.
- Community Connection & Impact: We are interested in projects that address a newly arising or underserved need—working on an issue within the KAUST community that has not received sufficient attention, support, or resources. This could mean working on a project that is very specific, such as increasing the supply of medical consumables in the KAUST community by repurposing resources. Your project could be more broadly applicable, however, such as developing affordable means for screening large numbers of people for this, or future, crisis situations. Either way, you should be able to demonstrate a strong connection to the KAUST community partner that is helping you define the problem and develop the solution. Impact can also be defined in several ways, either by how deeply a small group of people may be affected or how many people across a broad spectrum could benefit from your project (including the potential to scale your innovation beyond KAUST).
- Feasibility: We’re focused on supporting projects at all stages – from idea to prototype to pilot. While innovation is important, we want to see ideas that are at least plausible – if not squarely grounded in reality – so please, no time machines to go back and wipe out Covid-19 or perpetual motion machines to keep Netflix powered during a crisis. We are looking for ideas that, once developed, can result in a tangible benefit for the KAUST community. To demonstrate the feasibility of your project we want to know how you’ll make this project possible: you should describe any groundwork already done, note who you’ll be working with to implement the project, and show that you and your team have the right stuff to give your project the best chance possible. Should your team win a grant from the Innovation Challenge, you’ll have 3 months to develop a plan on how to bring your project to life with support from the Innovation & Economic Development department.
Judging Process
A group of three to five judges— KAUST faculty and administrators, The KAUST School and KAUST Community representatives—will judge each team. Judges complete two evaluations, one based on your written proposal and a second based on your video presentation. We will compile and average the scores from each judging team. Written evaluations count towards 45% of your overall score and your video submission will count for 55% of the overall team score.
