PETER THIEL ANNOUNCES 2013 CLASS OF “20 UNDER 20” THIEL FELLOWS

Fellowship to Host Third “Under 20 Summit” for Young Entrepreneurs in San Francisco June 1-2, 2013

SAN FRANCISCO – May 9, 2013 – Peter Thiel today introduced the 2013 class of new Thiel Fellows. The third set of young entrepreneurs to be awarded 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellowships, these fellows will pursue innovative scientific and technical projects, learn entrepreneurship from the ground up, and begin to build the innovative companies of tomorrow.

Peter Thiel said, “When we created the fellowship more than two years ago, our intention was to help a small number of creative people learn and accomplish more than they might have otherwise. To their great credit, they have exceeded our expectations, and inspired people of all ages by reminding them that qualities like intellectual curiosity, grit, and determination are more important than a degree in determining success in life.”

“As we welcome a new class of determined young people into the Thiel Fellowship community, we also celebrate the pioneering spirit of our 2011 and 2012 fellows,” said Jonathan Cain, president of the Thiel Foundation. “Over the past two years, they have launched more than thirty companies, and raised more than $34 million in outside funding, including venture investments, company sales, revenue, grants, sponsorships, and awards. They have been hiring employees, launching products, engaging with vendors and manufacturers, and advising some of the world’s most well-known technology companies. And now they’re helping the next generation of tech researchers and entrepreneurs by mentoring future cohorts of Thiel fellows.”

Over two years, each fellow receives $100,000 from the Thiel Foundation as well as mentorship from the Foundation’s network of tech entrepreneurs, investors, scientists, thought leaders, futurists, and innovators. Projects pursued by the 2013 class of fellows span numerous cutting-edge science and technology fields, including robotics, computer science, telecommunications, education, photonics, game development, cyberdefense, biotechnology, health I.T., law, neuroscience, fashion, and personal manufacturing.

Jim O’Neill, partner at Mithril Capital Management and fellowship co-founder, said, “Pessimists are correct that we still live in a world of scarcity and suffering. And optimists are correct that better science and technology can relieve these problems immensely. But contrary to both sides, nothing is inevitable. The young men and women Peter has appointed are committed to improving the quality of life for countless people through skillful execution of new ideas, and I am confident they will succeed.”

“The Thiel Fellowship has really evolved over the past two and a half years, from a small pool of idiosyncratic people willing to take a risk on our crazy idea into a robust and effective community of friends,” said Mike Gibson, the Thiel Foundation’s vice president for grants. “It’s been exciting to see how dramatically the network effects have expanded over time. The fellowship mentor network now has more than 250 experienced professionals, and the first two classes of fellows have quickly become each other’s best resources.”

“We’re also encouraging more young people to focus on entrepreneurship through our new Under 20 Summit,” said Danielle Strachman, program director of the Thiel Fellowship. “The Summit is a twice-yearly weekend-long conference where we bring together fellowship applicants, current fellows, mentors, and hundreds of young people who are excited about entrepreneurship. Since the fellowship supports just twenty people a year, the Under 20 Summits enable us to help hundreds more talented young innovators by connecting them with the knowledge and resources they need to take their ideas to the next level, no matter where they are.”

The Under 20 Summit is a semi-annual conference sponsored by the Thiel Foundation and open to young people from around the world who are passionate about entrepreneurship. The last summit, in New York City, drew more than 250 attendees from around the world. The next summit will take place in San Francisco on June 1 and 2. Attendance is by invitation only; to learn more or request an invitation please visit: http://www.thielfellowship.org/under-20-summit/

For the 2013 fellowship, the Thiel Foundation received applications from nearly every state in the U.S. and from 49 different countries. The applications represented a diverse pool of educational experiences, coming from young people in high schools, community colleges, undergraduate and graduate schools, state schools, technical schools and liberal arts colleges, students who are homeschooled or unschooled, and some who had already stopped out of college.

ABOUT THE 2013 THIEL FELLOWS:

Andrew Brackin (18, London, United Kingdom) co-founded a marketplace for designers that grew to 100,000 signups. Andrew runs Tomorrow’s Web, an event for young technologists with hundreds of attendees and major sponsors. He will be working on Bunchy, a funding platform that allows organizations to raise money from their audience on their social platforms and websites

Austin Russell (18, Newport Beach, CA) has a passion for developing innovative optoelectronic technologies for industry. His projects range from high-efficiency far-field wireless power transmission to low-cost early cancer detection systems. As a fellow, Austin will be focusing on 3D depth mapping and projection of interactive holograms through a compact laser-based module.

Christopher Walker (20, Chevy Chase, MD) is a video game designer, programmer, and artist. After leaving college to start a software company, he created a game designed to improve spatial cognition. As a Thiel Fellow, Chris will focus on developing interactive software to teach technical skills like programming, music, and mathematics.

Daniel Zulla (19, Regensburg, Germany) is a software engineer who is about to introduce a secure computing architecture used for servers and desktop computers alike.

Darren Lim (19, Singapore) came to love scientific innovation while studying in China, and remains a consumer at heart who is obsessed with cutting-edge gadgets. He is currently working on a startup to improve how we interact with technology.

Delian Asparouhov (19, Salt Lake City, UT) wants to improve health care. As a Thiel Fellow, he will work on technology to help manage disease and improve patient outcomes.

Diwank Singh Tomer (19, Palo Alto, CA) stopped out of his college in India to work on an online platform for learning to code. Aside from his love of poetry, he is an exceptional hacker and engineer who was awarded the Mozilla WebFWD fellowship for his efforts to improve learning online. He has since moved to the Bay Area to further his efforts and is currently working on a collaborative learning platform.

Gary Le (19, East Brunswick, NH) envisions a safer, cleaner, and more trustable Internet. He is working on a real-time online identity verification system for various applications in e-commerce, online communities, and collaborative consumption businesses.

James Schuler (19, Armonk, NY) started his first company when he was 12 and hasn’t stopped since. In high school he founded a health care company called Eligible and attended Y-Combinator as one of its youngest entrepreneurs. Recently, James left Eligible in order to focus on a bigger market: politics. As a Thiel Fellow, James will work to improve crowd funding in order to revolutionize the campaign finance market.

Kevin Wang (18, Vernon Hills, IL) began developing games and applications when he was 9. Since then, he has moved into entrepreneurship, applying his highly technical background to solve bigger problems. As a Thiel Fellow, he aims to simplify the world of law and open source software to end the wasteful litigation epidemic.

Laura Ball (19, Wauwatosa, WI) is researching value in neural systems. She would like to determine how information becomes important, and how important information maintains dominance over other information in order to define our conscious mind-states and behavioral responses.

Maddy Maxey (20, San Diego, CA) began interning in the fashion industry when she was 16 for companies like Tommy Hilfiger, Donna Ricco, Peter Som, and Nylon Magazine. After founding a popular fashion blog while in France and then winning a scholarship from the CFDA & Teen Vogue for her work, she started a clothing company of her own. As a Thiel Fellow, Maddy will focus on optimizing the clothing patterns and the enterprise software that make our current garment industry inefficient. Her goal is to make domestic production profitable by integrating software, not just hardware technologies, more fully into our manufacturing system.

Mark Daniel (19, Nashville, TN) co-founded social goal achievement site GoalHawk in 2011. Since then, he has been building StatusHawk, a workplace accountability tool that changes the way that companies handle status reports. As a Thiel Fellow, Mark will focus on building this early stage company into a profitable and sustainable business.

Nelson Zhang (19, Toronto, ON, Canada) has always loved making things. He has been tinkering with electronics since he was 10, and designed, manufactured, and sold several hardware products during high school and college. He is currently working on a desktop fabricator for electronics, aimed at lowering iteration time and costs for hardware companies. He hopes to make the design and production of physical things accessible to everyone.

Nick Liow (18, Vancouver, BC, Canada) believes everything is a remix and information wants to be free. Now, he’s challenging copyright by building ways for creators to get paid for giving their work to the public domain.

Riley Drake (18, Baltimore, MD) has been conducting scientific research since she was 15. She has studied immunology at Johns Hopkins University and infectious disease at Massachusetts General Hospital. During her fellowship she intends to apply physical principles to virology: using biophysics to create broad-spectrum viral therapies.

Riley Ennis (19, McLean, VA) founded Immudicon, an early-stage biotechnology company that has developed a novel cancer vaccine platform and telemetric sweat-monitoring device in order to improve diagnosis and treatment. The company was spun out of his research in high school at Georgetown University and the Sheikh Zayed Institute at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington. His ultimate goal is to exercise empathy within health care to revolutionize and personalize patient care.

Ritesh Agarwal (19, New Delhi, India) is one of the youngest entrepreneurs from India to raise angel investments. He runs OYO Inns, a chain of affordable, tech-enabled inns, and Oravel, a rising popular alternative to hotels in India. As a Thiel Fellow, Ritesh will use technology to bring affordable and standardized accommodations to emerging economies across the world, starting in India.

Thomas Sohmers (17, Hudson, MA) is a technology geek and hardware hacker who has been working at a MIT research lab since he was 13, developing everything from augmented reality eyewear to laser communication systems. Currently, Thomas is working on developing a new computing platform that uses very low powered processors in a cluster to transform the server, cloud, and research computing industries.

William LeGate (18, Marietta, GA) is an entrepreneur and computer scientist. He taught himself programming at age 14 from online Stanford lectures and has since created more than a dozen mobile apps which have been downloaded more than 5 million times and are now used by 1 in 12 American teens. During his fellowship, he plans to change the way that we discover apps for things around us.

Xinyi Chen (19, Beijing, China) is passionate about entrepreneurship and technology. She participated in the Tigerlabs accelerator last summer and developed prototypes for her project Helios, which attempts to make telepresence devices accessible to average families.

Zach Hamed (20, Holbrook, NY) originally from New York City, was a junior at Harvard studying computer science before joining the Thiel Fellowship. The son of a teacher and a computer programmer, Zach is a first-generation American who hopes to apply his interest in user interface and experience design to K-12 education. As a Thiel Fellow, Zach wants to develop a suite of beautifully-designed tools for K-12 teachers, saving them time, providing them supplemental income, and helping them do what they do best—teach.

ABOUT THE THIEL FOUNDATION

The Thiel Foundation defends and promotes freedom in all its dimensions: political, personal, and economic. The Thiel Foundation supports innovative scientific research and new technologies that empower people to improve their lives, champions organizations and individuals who expose human rights abuses and authoritarianism in all its guises, and encourages the exploration of new ideas and new spaces where people can be less reliant on government and where freedom can flourish. For more information, see ThielFoundation.org, 20under20.org, and BreakoutLabs.org.

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The Thiel Foundation announces first Breakout Labs awards of 2013

SAN FRANCISCO, Apr. 17, 2013 - The Thiel Foundation announced today the first Breakout Labs awards of 2013 to two early-stage companies working to bridge the gap dividing human beings and technology in unique ways: SkyPhrase, Inc. and Stealth Biosciences.

SkyPhrase is helping computers to understand human language with greater precision than ever before. Anyone who has tried to ferret out complex ideas through simple search queries knows that computers are ill-equipped to cope with the flexibility and efficiency of human language. Two competing approaches have dominated research in natural language processing: those that rely on statistical, context-independent approaches and those that rely on logical reasoning. Leaping over this artificial divide, the SkyPhrase team conceived of a unique technology that integrates the strengths of logical and biologically-inspired statistical approaches. With the help of Breakout Labs funding, they are creating a platform for searching, accessing, analyzing and monitoring data that relies on natural language.

“Our goal is to help scientists, engineers, businesses and consumers use data more efficiently and powerfully,” said SkyPhrase Founder and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Professor, Nick Cassimatis. “Our approach will make it significantly cheaper and simpler to glean important insights from broad and heterogeneous sources of data.”

Turning from cognitive to molecular bridges, Breakout Labs is also funding Stealth Biosciences to develop nanoscale devices that can measure and exert control over biological processes at the level of single cells. Stanford University professors Nick Melosh and Craig Garner developed two nanomaterial technologies – Nanostraws and Stealth Probes – that provide direct, non-destructive electrical and fluidic access to cells. Stealth’s devices represent a highly sensitive toolset for research, therapeutic, and diagnostic applications, including: high-throughput drug discovery, regenerative medicine, oncology, and neuroscience.

“We are excited about the potential of our nanotechnologies for biological research and disease treatment,” said Stealth CEO Ari Chaney. “Thanks to the vision of Breakout Labs, we can now concentrate on building Nanostraw devices that can be used to reprogram T-cells for cancer therapy, produce stem cells efficiently and safely, or create a set of stapled-peptide drug candidates. In parallel, we are developing the first paired-cell recording system using Stealth Probes to put in the hands of leading researchers. This technology holds great promise for solving the mysteries of CNS diseases as well as their treatment, and could serve an important role in the BRAIN initiative recently announced by President Obama.”

Founded in November 2011, Breakout Labs has funded 14 companies in areas ranging from food science and biomedicine to clean energy. For many of these companies, Breakout Labs was the first external investor. Breakout Labs provides up to $350,000 to early-stage companies with cutting-edge technologies to achieve specific milestones that are necessary to attract further support, thereby bridging a critical funding gap in commercial development. Several Breakout Labs’ recipients have since received additional funding through investment or government grants.

“Coming out of our first year, we are excited by our early signs of success and pleased to renew our commitment to driving scientific entrepreneurship through philanthropy,” said Breakout Labs Executive Director, Lindy Fishburne. “The first companies to be awarded Breakout Labs funding in 2013 are both co-founded by professors from prestigious universities, reflecting a growing and much welcome interest from the academic community in commercialization.”

A list of all Breakout Labs grant recipients is available at: https://www.breakoutlabs.org/recipients.html.

ABOUT BREAKOUT LABS

Breakout Labs, the newest program of the Thiel Foundation, does not make typical foundation grants—it is a revolutionary, revolving funding model through which successful projects fund the next generation of daring technological innovation. Breakout Labs is reshaping the way early-stage R&D is funded, by providing support for young companies to advance their most radical ideas. Successful grantees will return a capped royalty stream and a small percentage of equity in their company to Breakout Labs and, thereby, contribute to the next generation of scientific innovation. For more information, see www.BreakoutLabs.org.

ABOUT THE THIEL FOUNDATION

The Thiel Foundation defends and promotes freedom in all its dimensions: political, personal, and economic. The Thiel Foundation supports innovative scientific research and new technologies that empower people to improve their lives, champions organizations and individuals who expose human rights abuses and authoritarianism in all its guises, and encourages the exploration of new ideas and new spaces where people can be less reliant on government and where freedom can flourish. For more information, see www.ThielFoundation.org.

SAN FRANCISCO, Mar. 05, 2013 - Imitatio, a project of the Thiel Foundation, announced today that Timothy Snyder will speak at Stanford on March 13, 2013 to inaugurate the René Girard Lectures, a transatlantic lecture series in honor of the philosopher René Girard.

Snyder is Professor of History at Yale and author of Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, a pioneering study of mass murder in Eastern Europe using sources in all the original languages. Changing our understanding of the roots of violence and the origins of the Holocaust, Bloodlands was selected as a Best Book of 2010 by The Economist and has been translated into German, Polish, and French and acclaimed around the world.

Snyder’s lecture, “Why Did the Holocaust Happen? A History Lesson for the Future,” will make fresh research on this essential question accessible to a wide audience. “Everyone of good will acknowledges the centrality of the Holocaust, but we have scarcely begun to understand it,” Snyder said. “This is not just an intellectual problem, but a deep danger if we wrongly assume that acknowledging the catastrophe is enough to prevent something similar from happening again.”

The lecture series honors René Girard, who has elaborated a sweeping anthropology of religion and violence in his daring 50-year intellectual career. Born in France in 1923, Girard moved to the United States in 1947 and has pursued a unique transatlantic path ever since, publishing more than a dozen books in French all while teaching at American universities, most recently Stanford, where he is Professor Emeritus. Girard’s work has been translated around the world, he has been made one of only 40 “immortals” of the Académie française, and he was given the Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award by the Modern Language Association.

“Great teachers are rare, and great minds who grapple directly with the most fundamental problems are almost nonexistent,” said Peter Thiel, entrepreneur, investor, and chairman of the Thiel Foundation. “The René Girard Lectures offer a forum to ask big questions as Girard has never shied away from doing.”

Imitatio, a project of the Thiel Foundation, supports research, publications, and events to further develop, critique, and disseminate Girard’s “mimetic theory” of human culture. Girard hypothesizes that all the arts of peace and the disasters of violence have the same cause: the imitation through which humans learn how to talk and how to collaborate also leads us to rivalry and retribution. According to Girard, human cultures have survived this paradox by violently defining themselves against collective victims: scapegoating.

Timothy Snyder’s work boldly examines the role of violence in history. As the René Girard Lecturer he will stay on the Stanford campus for a week to participate in research and interact informally with students and colleagues. Snyder gave the inaugural “Conférence René Girard” (in French) on October 25, 2012 at Sciences Po in Paris, co-sponsored by the Département d’Histoire of Sciences Po and the Mémorial de la Shoah. The René Girard Lectures will continue to alternate between Stanford and Paris, Girard’s two intellectual homes, giving thinkers and audiences in both France and America an occasion to consider fundamental ideas.

Timothy Snyder’s René Girard Lecture is free and open to the public on Wednesday, March 13, 2013 at 7:00 pm at Cubberley Auditorium, Stanford University. The lecture is co-sponsored by Stanford’s Department of French and Italian (where Girard is Professor Emeritus), Imitatio (a project of the Thiel Foundation), Stanford’s History Department, and the Consulate General of France in San Francisco.

For more information visit the web site at www.girardlectures.org.

Breakout Labs has awarded an energy firm $300,000 to continue its research harnessing tornadoes for cheap, clean energy.

Canadian company, AVEtec, plans proof-of-concept test to extract energy from a man-made, controlled tornado

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 13, 2012 - The Thiel Foundation announced today three new grants awarded through Breakout Labs, its revolutionary revolving fund to promote innovation in science and technology. The most recent award takes the program into clean energy, with a bold new proposal to harness the power of atmospheric vortexes.

AVEtec is the brainchild of Canadian engineer, Louis Michaud. His Atmospheric Vortex Engine (AVE) harnesses the physics of tornados to produce extremely cheap and clean energy. In his design, warm or humid air is introduced into a circular station, where it takes the form of a rising vortex, i.e. a controlled tornado. The temperature difference between this heated air and the atmosphere above it supports the vortex and drives multiple turbines. The vortex can be shut down at any time by turning off the source of warm air.

Among its advantages over other sources of energy, AVE power generation neither produces carbon emissions nor needs energy storage. AVEtec projects that the cost of the energy it generates could be as low as 3 cents per kilowatt hour, making it one of the least expensive forms of energy production. An AVE power station could have a diameter of 100 meters and generate 200 megawatts of electrical power, the same order of magnitude as conventional coal power stations.

“The power in a tornado is undisputed,” said Louis Michaud. “My work has established the principles by which we can control and exploit that power to provide clean energy on an unprecedented scale. With the funding from Breakout Labs, we are building a prototype in partnership with Lambton College to demonstrate the feasibility and the safety of the atmospheric vortex engine.”

Additional Breakout Labs grants were also recently awarded to General Genomics and Siva Therapeutics. General Genomics uses ancestral DNA sequence reconstruction to radically improve the efficiency with which protein- and peptide-based therapeutics, as well as industrially-relevant enzymes, can be developed. Siva Therapeutics is developing therapies with the potential to be more effective, safer, less expensive, and less invasive by exploiting the biophysical properties of gold nanorods engineered to capture infrared light and emit heat that destroys diseased tissue.

“Our three newest grant recipients—AVEtec, General Genomics, and Siva Therapeutics—are vastly different in their technologies, company strategies, and goals,” said Breakout Labs Executive Director, Lindy Fishburne. “What unites them is ground-breaking science coupled with the passion, vision, and creativity of their founders. We are delighted to bring them into the Breakout Labs community.”

Launched in November 2011, Breakout Labs provides early-stage companies with the means to pursue their most radical goals in science and technology. To date Breakout Labs has awarded a total of twelve grants of up to $350,000 each. Breakout Labs accepts and funds proposals on a rolling basis.

Previous grants, announced earlier in the year, have been awarded to companies working on cultured meat, biomarker detection, brain reconstruction, reversible cryopreservation, human cell re-engineering, universal airborne contaminant detection, artificial protein therapeutics, and antimatter-based fuel. A summary of the 2012 Breakout Labs grant recipients is available at: https://www.breakoutlabs.org/recipients.html

“The world faces enormous challenges—resource scarcity, aging populations, economic mismanagement—and we need more visionary scientists and engineers like those at Breakout Labs making authentic discoveries and bringing world-changing products to market,” said Thiel Foundation president Jonathan Cain. “We hope Breakout Labs inspires more investors to fund real innovation; more young people to pursue technology and entrepreneurship; and more nonprofits to foster risky, radical ideas.”

ABOUT BREAKOUT LABS

Breakout Labs, the newest program of the Thiel Foundation, does not make typical foundation grants—it is a revolutionary, revolving funding model through which successful projects fund the next generation of daring scientific exploration. Breakout Labs is reshaping the way early-stage science is funded, by providing support for young companies to advance their most radical ideas. Successful grantees will return a modest royalty and warrant stake to Breakout Labs and in this way, contribute to the next generation of scientific innovation. For more information, see www.BreakoutLabs.org.

ABOUT THE THIEL FOUNDATION

The Thiel Foundation defends and promotes freedom in all its dimensions: political, personal, and economic. The Thiel Foundation supports innovative scientific research and new technologies that empower people to improve their lives, champions organizations and individuals who expose human rights abuses and authoritarianism in all its guises, and encourages the exploration of new ideas and new spaces where people can be less reliant on government and where freedom can flourish. For more information, see www.ThielFoundation.org.

NPR profiles 2010 Thiel Fellow Eden Full

Program awards $100,000 grants to innovative, driven young people with creative ideas who want to make a difference for the world

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 15, 2012 – Silicon Valley entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist Peter Thiel announced today that his nonprofit foundation has begun accepting applications for a new class of 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellows.

“Our world is suffering from a tech innovation drought,” said Thiel. “We think young people are capable of tackling hard problems and building big things, and we hope to enable more of them to work on cool projects for two years and push the boundaries of what’s possible not just a decade from now, but today.”

“The Thiel Fellowship is a way for driven young innovators to experience the entrepreneurial world by taking bold risks and learning for themselves what it takes to bring their dreams to fruition,” said Jonathan Cain, president of the Thiel Foundation. “You don’t need anyone’s permission to change the world, just an adventurous spirit and a passion for technology. The Thiel Fellowship’s mission is to give these rising visionaries the freedom, support, and time to develop their ideas as soon as they are ready.”

Thiel Fellowships consist of separate grants of $100,000 to 20 people under 20 years old, so that they can leave the classroom and pursue innovation. In addition to the financial support, Thiel Fellows are mentored by hundreds of highly accomplished entrepreneurs, scientists, investors, thinkers, and innovators of the Thiel Network.

During the two-year fellowship, the Thiel Foundation and its network of mentors provide guidance and support to help the Thiel Fellows build their scientific, technical, and entrepreneurial ideas. While fellows are expected to work on their innovative ideas full-time, they determine their specific paths; this might mean starting a company, but could also mean doing freelance work, developing a social movement, interning at another company, or pursuing research and development independently.

Since the Thiel Fellowship began in 2011, more than forty young people have been awarded Thiel Fellowships for project ideas that push the boundaries of industries such as nuclear and alternative energy, robotics, biotechnology, 3D printing, synthetic biology, public health, education, finance, scientific equipment, gaming, and software. The Thiel Fellowship has been featured in news outlets all over the world and was the subject of a two-part CNBC special in August 2012 entitled “20 Under 20: Transforming Tomorrow,” now available on Hulu and iTunes.

“As a Thiel Fellow I’ve experienced an incredible outpouring of advice and assistance from professionals with great expertise in a variety of different fields,” said 2012 Thiel Fellow Noor Siddiqui. “I really enjoy the flexibility and creative freedom the Fellowship provides,” she added, “not to mention broad exposure to the kinds of people, places, and ideas that can help me make a difference in the world.”

Though applicants may already have scientific, technical, or nonprofit ideas,

Thiel Fellowships are not limited to those with established companies or developed innovations. Teams of up to four may also apply.

In conjunction with the new round of Fellowship applications, the Thiel Foundation will be hosting an invitation-only “Under 20 Summit” in New York City on November 10 and 11, 2012. Modeled after the success of July’s “Under 20 Summit” in San Francisco, this event will be an opportunity for young entrepreneurial people to collaborate and inspire one another. Young people interested in attending can request an invitation through the Fellowship’s website.

“Although we only accept around 20 new Thiel Fellows each year, we stay in touch with many of our previous applicants who did not receive Fellowships, some of whom have been paired with mentors in Silicon Valley as a direct result of this application process,” said Danielle Strachman, Thiel Fellowship program director. “A number of applicants who were not accepted have told us that the application process helped them to form their goals more concretely, and have begun the process of building out their companies, nonprofits, and personal networks to tackle the future today. Through events like the Under 20 Summit, local meet-ups, and virtual connections on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, we’re excited to help build such a robust community rallying around youth entrepreneurship.”

Applications and more information about the 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellowship and the current fellows are available now at ThielFellowship.org. Applications for the 2013 class are due by 11:59 P.M. (UTC–12) on December 31, 2012. Fellowship recipients will be announced in spring, 2013. Applicants must have been born after December 31, 1992 to qualify.

ABOUT THE THIEL FOUNDATION

The Thiel Foundation defends and promotes freedom in all its dimensions: political, personal, and economic. The Thiel Foundation supports innovative scientific research and new technologies that empower people to improve their lives, champions organizations and individuals who expose human rights abuses and authoritarianism in all its guises, and encourages the exploration of new ideas and new spaces where people can be less reliant on government and where freedom can flourish. For more information, see thielfoundation.org, 20under20.org, and Breakout Labs.org.

MEDIA CONTACT

Ross Gillfillan for the Thiel Foundation
(415) 599-4403
ross@torchcommunications.com

Download the press release as a PDF.

Early-stage Companies Seek to Revolutionize Meat and Leather Production, Regenerative Medicine, and Medical Diagnostics

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 15, 2012 - The Thiel Foundation announced today three new grants awarded through Breakout Labs, its revolutionary revolving fund to promote innovation in science and technology. The newest awards focus on solutions at the intersection of biology and advanced technologies.

Breakout Labs recipient Modern Meadow is developing a fundamentally new approach to meat and leather production that is based on the latest advances in tissue engineering and causes no harm to animals. Co-founders Gabor and Andras Forgacs respectively invented and helped commercialize bioprinting, a technology that builds tissues and organ structures based on the computer-controlled delivery of cells in three dimensions. They previously co-founded Organovo, a San Diego-based regenerative medicine company which applies bioprinting to a range of medical applications, including drug discovery, drug testing and ultimately transplant tissues. With Breakout Labs funding, they plan to apply the latest advances in tissue engineering beyond medicine to produce novel consumer biomaterials, including an edible cultured meat prototype that can provide a humane and sustainable source of animal protein to consumers around the world.

“Breakout Labs is a much-needed source of funding and support for emerging technologies like ours,” said Andras Forgacs. “Investors across the board have become more risk-averse and yet early funding is critical to enable truly innovative ideas. We are proud to be a part of the Breakout Labs program.”

“Modern Meadow is combining regenerative medicine with 3D printing to imagine an economic and compassionate solution to a global problem,” said Lindy Fishburne, Breakout Labs’ executive director. “We hope our support will help propel them through the early stage of their development, so they can turn their inspired vision into reality.”

Additional Breakout Labs grants were awarded to Bell Biosystems and Entopsis. Bell Biosystems is developing a technology that can be introduced into therapeutic cells to track them using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) instruments. Entopsis is developing a low-cost, versatile, nano-engineered platform for diagnosing multiple diseases from a single sample.

Launched in November 2011, Breakout Labs provides teams of researchers in early-stage companies with the means to pursue their most radical goals in science and technology. To date Breakout Labs has awarded a total of nine grants, of up to $350,000 each. Breakout Labs accepts and funds proposals on a rolling basis.

Previous grants, announced in April 2012, have been awarded to companies working on brain reconstruction, reversible cryopreservation, human cell re-engineering, universal airborne contaminant detection, artificial protein therapeutics, and antimatter based fuel.

“People used to dream about how innovation would make the future a radically better, more advanced place,” said Jonathan Cain, president of the Thiel Foundation. “By funding unusual approaches to known challenges, such as conflict over food prices or the diagnosing and curing of diseases, we hope that Breakout Labs helps bring about the sort of technologically prosperous world that people once imagined possible.”

Further information about the companies funded by Breakout Labs is available at: www.breakoutlabs.org/recipients.html

ABOUT BREAKOUT LABS

Breakout Labs, the newest program of the Thiel Foundation, does not make typical foundation grants—it is a revolutionary, revolving funding model through which successful projects fund the next generation of daring scientific exploration. Breakout Labs is reshaping the way early-stage science is funded by providing support for young companies to advance their most radical ideas. Successful grantees will return a modest royalty and warrant stake to Breakout Labs and, in this way, contribute to the next generation of scientific innovation. For more information, see www.BreakoutLabs.org.

ABOUT THE THIEL FOUNDATION

The Thiel Foundation defends and promotes freedom in all its dimensions: political, personal, and economic. The Thiel Foundation supports innovative scientific research and new technologies that empower people to improve their lives, champions organizations and individuals who expose human rights abuses and authoritarianism in all its guises, and encourages the exploration of new ideas and new spaces where people can be less reliant on government and where freedom can flourish. For more information, see www.ThielFoundation.org.