The BRICS Young Innovator Prize

Application Deadline: 26 May 2023.

The BRICS Young Innovator Prize is a special recognition of young talented entrepreneurs and researchers, whose outstanding innovations (inventions, products, applications, and services) will make a profound impact on the socio-economic, environment and condition of life in BRICS societies.  The BRICS Young Innovator Prize is a platform for BRICS young scientists and entrepreneurs to share their best practices in innovation and venturing.

This initiative was introduced in 2018, during South Africa’s BRICS Chairship.  A total of five instalments of the BRICS Young Innovator Prize have been held successfully and it has become an important stage for BRICS youths to display their innovation talents and strengthen exchanges and cooperation.  The winner of the Young Innovator Prize will be granted through contests among the youths from BRICS countries.  The upcoming 6^th BRICS Young Innovator Prize will be convened in-person as part of the 7^th BRICS Young Scientist Forum which will be held from 31^ST of July, until the 3^rd of August 2023 South Africa.

In line with the established tradition of previous BRICS Chairships, South Africa will host a wide range of BRICS activities in-person leading up to and following the Summit.  One of these activities is the  6^th BRICS Young Innovator Prize.

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS & ELIGIBILITY

• The Innovations shall focus on the following 5 thematic areas:
  • Modernizing manufacturing;
  • Modernizing agriculture;
  • Modernizing mining;
  • Digital and Circular economies;
• The innovations should emanate from universities, research institutes or registered enterprises in line with a BRICS member country’s law;
• The project must be innovative and has been transformed from scientific and technological achievements;
• The innovation should be in a phase of limited product testing, discontinuous production, certification, or preparation of the product for market;
• The innovation should not infringe upon the intellectual property of any third party and the Intellectual Property Rights (including patent, standard, thesis, etc.) and must be owned by the project team members;
• The age of applicant must be under 40 years and a citizen of a BRICS country; and
• Each applicant can only choose to compete in one project field for the awards.

Prizes and Assessment

• 1^st round of evaluation

The 1^st round of evaluation will be conducted by reviewing written documents of the applications submitted after the closing date of the 26^th May 2023.  Each member state will recommend applications to compete in the in-person event to be held in South Africa from 31 August 2023 till the 03^rd August 2023.

• Final evaluation

Projects will in this round be required to pitch, each project presentation will be limited to 10 minutes.  The jury will score all the final projects which will then be ranked in the order of their score.  The top 10 highest-scoring projects will be the award-winning projects and other projects will be the merit projects for the BRICS Young Innovator Prize.

• Prizes

First Place         – $ 25 000.00

Second Place     – $ 15 000.00

Third Place        – $ 10 000.00

Application Procedure:

• All Applications are to be submitted by email to [email protected] by the 26^th May 2023 Close of Business(16h00 CAT), with all supporting documents as per the application template.

For More Information:

Visit the Official Webpage of the BRICS Young Innovators Prize Competition 2023