DOE launches new AlgaePrize student competition

In Washington, D.C., the inaugural 2022–2023 U.S. Department of Energy Bioenergy Technologies Office AlgaePrize competition is now open. The AlgaePrize is a new competition which encourages high school through graduate level students to pursue innovative ideas for the development, design, and invention of technologies within the commercial algae value chain.

The AlgaePrize, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy Bioenergy Technologies Office and supported by The Algae Foundation and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), challenges students to become the next generation of bioeconomy professionals by expanding novel solutions to production, processing, and new product development on the way to gigaton-scale algae commercialization for fuel, food, products, and carbon dioxide utilization/sequestration.

The competition will last 18 months. The three areas of interest for the AlgaePrize include both microalgae and macroalgae. Student teams should focus their project on one of the following areas of interest:

• Production
• Downstream Processing
• Novel Products or Analytical Tools