Italian entrepreneur using Machine Learning and blockchain to provide universal access to reliable information, and Nigerian bringing zero-carbon cookstoves to poor rural villagers win share of US$500,000 supercomputing giveaway for Global South sustainability
The See Through Carbon Competition, a unique pilot project to bring cutting-edge technology to promote carbon drawdown in the Global South, has two new winners. The winning projects and project leaders are:
- Dynamic Map of Shared Environmental Truth | Laura Degiovanni, a UK-based Italian tech entrepreneur
- From Firewood to Zero-Carbon Pellets: cookstoves to reduce carbon and improve health for rural Nigerians |Johnson Jayeola, a Nigerian industrial chemist and zero-carbon advocate
These projects are the latest to be awarded a share of a half-million-dollar value free licence for supercomputer-grade distributed low-carbon cloud computing.
- The See Through Carbon Competition is created and administered by zero-budget social media network See Through News.
- The prize is provided by a surprise donation of US$500,000 worth of supercomputer-grade cloud computing by low-carbon cloud management platform Yellow Dog,
- Details of the Competition’s first winner. Dr. Samuel Adekunle, can be found in this press release.
- All three winners so far were alerted to the Competition by Global Sustainable Future Network, a non-profit alliance of early-career researchers in the Global South/
- GSFN has partnered with See Through News to promote the Competition to its network, and is helping to shortlist applicants.
- To benefit from the prize, winners must submit their data for processing before Yellow Dog’s donation of a free licence expires on April 10th.
See Through News hopes to make this pilot Competition permanent, bigger, and to provide a more comprehensive range of technological support and tools. Anyone interested in hearing more about this project, please email: seethroughcarbon.competition@seethroughnews.org
Laura Degiovanni
Laura is the CEO of TiiQu a company using blockchain technology and artificial intelligence to disseminate, preserve from manipulation and make accessible the verified truth so that trust and collaboration can flourish. Since 2016 she is committed to facilitating a world where decision-making is fair and unbiased and everyone can grow their critical thinking and improve their condition based on free access to reliable information regardless of their gender, status and ethnicity.
On The See Through Carbon Competition:
It is not easy to find competitions that open up less obvious innovators by drawing on untested projects. The See-through Carbon Competition did, which in itself speaks volumes about the openness of STN. I appreciated the transparency of the process and am especially grateful to the panel of experts for helping to crystallise the narrative through insightful questioning.
On having her application approved:
I am honoured to be among the winners of the See Through Carbon Competition. Today more than ever, I am motivated to overcome challenges and deliver the underlying enabler of Carbon breakdown and a sustainable future: a source of co-created, verified, environmental truth and knowledge and a beacon for good in a dark and gloomy world.
On how this prize might affect/improve/transform/accelerate her project:
This competition provides me with the freedom to innovate for the good of humanity. The prize will enable testing the prototype and demonstrate how verified bite-size knowledge can fight the spreading of misinformation and foster sustainability goals.
On how her project will help the See Through News Goal of measurably reducing carbon:
Decarbonisation strongly depends on collaboration and adoption of new technologies, strategies and processes and the implementation of partnerships, regulatory frameworks and standards. The crucial base for effective collaboration in complex systems is the ability to rely on shared taxonomy and knowledge; likewise, the pre-condition to inspire adoption is reliable knowledge dissemination about risks, methodologies, solutions, impacts and responsibilities. Although we live in the information age, anyone willing to take environmental decisions or learn can hardly screen and put together the elements needed to form their view without very long research. That’s why QuTii exists.
Johnson Jayeola
Johnson Jayeola is a chemist, industrial researcher and ‘climate actioneer’. His professional background is in Health, Safety and Environmental compliance, clean energy research and development, quality control and quality assurance in the energy sector. He is the Director of Environment & Sustainability and a Managing Partner at Fring Integrated
On The See Through Carbon Competition:
The See through Carbon Competition’s goal form the basis of my interest in the competition, it says “speeding up carbon drawdown by helping the inactive become active”. This phrase is profound and it addresses the existing global need in the south. The competition process is distinctly characterised by openness and honesty.
On having his application approved:
I received the notification of approval and the news as a winner of the See Through Carbon Competition with great delight. Extra good feeling comes from being part of the first set of winners of the pilot competition.
On how this prize might affect/improve/transform/accelerate his project:
This prize will aid my project in preserving the trees, reducing carbon footprints, sensitising and enhancing the health of Nigerians in rural communities. Also, it will help in experimenting my novel data gathering methodology, data computation and establishment of credible research facts that will form the basis of a reputable publication for future reference and public consumption.
On how his project will help the See Through News Goal of measurably reducing carbon:
My project is substituting the usage of firewood for cooking with Powerstove (a zero carbon biofuel cooking system driven by pellet fuel) and the data gathering procedure will involve sensitization of locals about carbon and its effects. The former explicitly speeds up carbon drawdown while the latter expressly makes the inactive become active.
Expert Panel Reaction
See Through News founder and Expert Panel Chair Robert Stern thanked Laura and Johnson for responding to the Competition, and for their prompt application, rapid response to requests for clarifications by the shortlist panel:
‘The fact that these two projects are so different, and different again from Samueal’s application, is very exciting for us. None of us knew what to expect when we threw this Competition together at short notice to make best use of Yellow Dog’s extraordinary, and unexpected, donation. It’s hugely encouraging to learn not only that projects like this exist, but that we can access them, and, we hope, transformatively help them.
When we first proposed this project to experts, they quite rightly questioned whether projects that met our Global South/carbon drawdown/supercomputing criteria existed, let alone whether we could find them on zero budget, from a standing start, with such a ridiculously short deadline. Thanks to the efforts of GSFN, our Expert Panel and many other volunteers, we’ve been able to find people like Laura and Johnson.
We hope this pilot proves there are carbon-reducing needles to be found in the Global South research haystack, and hope it will convince other donors to make this Competition permanent, bigger and more comprehensive. Like everything at See Through News, it’s dedicated to our Goal of Speeding up Carbon Drawdown by Helping the Inactive become Active. We need to do both better, faster, and the response to this Competition has been inspiring.’
Competition Rules, Expert Panel & Applications
Details of the Competition, and its extraordinary origins, can be found in a previous press release.
Information on the Expert Panellists and the judging criteria and system can be found elsewhere on the See Through News website. Details will be updated as we add new experts in a broad range of expertises. All are volunteering their time.
There’s still time to apply, and still compute available, for more applicants for this Pilot.
Before applying, the organisers recommend that applicants carefully read the following points – all accessible on this website.