Nominations for the PopTech Social Innovation Fellows program opened earlier this month. Whether you’re nominating yourself or someone else, how can you best make the case?

Based on past years’ most compelling nominations, here are some helpful tips:

• Give specific examples of the nominee’s leadership and collaborative success.
• Describe clearly the central innovation and how it has begun to prove its impact. Why is this a breakthrough idea? What demonstrates that it really works?
• Indicate the most promising path and potential timeframe for reaching scale and sustainability. How many people could be reached, how, and when?
• Include a personal highlight or two to help reveal the nominee’s passion, dedication and other key qualities.

We need your help identifying the strongest candidates for this year’s class of Fellows. Please have a look at the call for nominations and submit your nominations any time between now and April 3, 2012.

Image: captain.orange

How do we encourage resilience in the face of the world’s many challenges? PopTech’s major focus in 2012 centers on that very question. And some of the best new solutions we’ve seen have come directly from social innovators, visionaries on the front lines of social change. Now is your chance to help speed up their impact, by nominating candidates for the PopTech Social Innovation Fellows program.

Fellows are invited to Maine in October for a five-day training, immediately followed by an opportunity to attend and present at the PopTech conference. They gain new skills and broad exposure, and benefit by connecting with the program’s faculty and the larger PopTech network. Our primary goal with the Fellows program: to enable these emerging leaders to reach real, wide, sustainable impact as quickly as possible.

Check out the Call for Nominations to help spark your thinking. Our alumni from the classes of 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 also offer great examples of changemakers putting new ideas into action: a mushroom-based alternative to Styrofoam™, peer-to-peer education loans, a platform for sustainable food distribution, and solar systems sold like mobile phone minutes, among others.

If you or someone you know is a great fit, head to poptech.org/nominate and submit a nomination. Get it done soon: nominations close this year on April 3, 2012.

The Social Innovation Fellows program is supported by the Rita Allen Foundation, the Nike Foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, PwC and American Express.

Among the most exciting PopTech conference moments are when the Fellows each give a glimpse into their compelling work and how it might change the world. The Fellows’ 2011 presentations are now available online so you can revisit those you savored and catch up with others you might have missed.

This year, watch the 2011 Science and Public Leadership Fellows share their breakthrough work in areas including autism, robotics, infrasound, environmental bioremediation and more.

And learn about the ambitious initiatives of the 2011 Social Innovation Fellows ranging from local food networks to pay-as-you-go solar energy, and from keeping girls in school to building community through music and architecture.

Check out the Fellows’ big ideas and keep an eye out as their promising efforts continue to make great progress.

PopTech is proud to announce the Social Innovation Fellows Class of 2011!

This year’s Fellows are spearheading a compelling set of solutions to global challenges. They are reconnecting refugee families, helping people become “makers” of their own technology, improving local food production and distribution, and getting to the heart of measuring true impact. They are helping girls access education and healthcare, building community through music and architecture, and using a combination of high-tech and good business to get clean water, sustainable energy and appropriate medical devices to those who most need them.

Meet this year’s Fellows:

• Erika Block created Local Orbit’s online tools to make local and regional food distribution more efficient, transparent and sustainable, support local economies and make healthy, locally produced food widely available and easy to buy.

• Krista Donaldson runs D-Rev: Design Revolution, which works with local partners to bring state-of-the-art, user-centric products to empower the lives of the four billion people living on less than four dollars a day.

• Rose Goslinga leads the Syngenta Foundation’s Kilimo Salama, helping increase farm productivity and food security through the first micro-insurance product available to smallholder Kenyan farmers.

• Sameer Kalwani helps provide clean drinking water to those without access through Sarvajal, a technology-enabled franchise business rapidly expanding in India.

• Christopher Marianetti and Found Sound Nation work with youth and communities to create original music projects that unlock creative potential and build bridges between cultures.

• David and Christopher Troensegaard Mikkelsen founded Refugees United to streamline the process of reconnecting refugee families through web and mobile technologies.

• Megan White Mukuria founded ZanaAfrica to address root causes of gender inequality across Africa and enhance girls' educational attainment through sustainable African-led innovations, beginning with the delivery of sanitary pads and related health information.

• Dominic Muren’s design lab, the Humblefactory, and design-sharing platform, Alchematter, help make object design and fabrication truly open and collaborative for communities around the world.

• Michael Murphy co-founded MASS Design Group to create well-built environments that help break the cycle of poverty through appropriate design, local investment and innovation.

• Paul Needham co-founded Simpa Networks, which sells high-quality solar energy systems on a pay-as-you-go basis to underserved people in emerging markets.

• Jake Porway launched Data Without Borders to match nonprofits with pro bono data scientists to solve problems using data collection, management, and analysis in the service of humanity.

• Nithya Ramanathan’s Nexleaf Analytics leverages the power of affordable mobile technology for health and environmental impact studies, facilitating quicker feedback and more effective solutions.

• Mohammed Rabah Salem provides locally built wind turbines and small-scale solar technologies to both Palestine and Israel, knitting together common needs in an otherwise deeply divided setting.

• Amy Sun created Fab Folk to extend MIT’s Fab Lab program, building local technical capacity that gives people the tools to innovate and turn design ideas into real objects.

The Fellows will be joining the program’s world-class faculty in Maine this October for a five-day training session and will then appear on stage at PopTech 2011: The World Rebalancing.

The Social Innovation Fellows program is supported by American Express, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Nike Foundation, PwC and the Rita Allen Foundation.

We look forward to connecting these inspiring leaders with the PopTech network and helping to accelerate their work!

At the PopTech Science and Public Leadership Fellows retreat at National Geographic headquarters earlier this month, the program’s faculty provided key insights to help equip the 2011 Fellows with enhanced leadership, collaboration and communication skills.

For a taste of their ideas, have a look at this wonderful graphic record produced by Peter Durand.

Jeff Nesbit, Dennis Dimick and Lisa Witter on storytelling

You’ll find:

• Storytelling tips from people like Lisa Witter of Fenton, Jad Abumrad of Radiolab, Joe Palca of NPR and Jeff Nesbit of Climate Nexus;
• A view into science policy-making through the eyes of Thomas A. Kalil of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy;
• Peter Lee of Microsoft Research on how idealism and diversity drive scientific discovery;
• The ten rules of collaboration from Philip E. Bourne of UCSD; and more.

Philip Bourne and Peter Lee on collaboration and science in industry

PopTech is very grateful to the faculty for generously donating their time to benefit the Fellows, and to our partners, Microsoft Research, National Geographic, the Rita Allen Foundation, the National Science Foundation and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, for supporting this program.

Stay tuned for PopTech 2011, where you’ll have a chance to see the Fellows in action when they present from the PopTech stage.

Images: Peter Durand

How useful would it be to find a cure for autism? Energy sources less likely to contribute to climate change? Disaster early warning systems based on sound waves? Ways to enable remote surgery or speed up stroke rehabilitation?

PopTech is proud to introduce a dynamic group of people who are working toward those goals and more: the Science and Public Leadership Fellows Class of 2011. From analyzing malaria to crowdsourcing basic science, this year’s Fellows are spearheading research that has the potential to change the world. We’re bringing them together this week at National Geographic headquarters in Washington, DC, with a faculty of experts who will help them further develop the leadership, collaboration and communication skills to become more effective leaders within the scientific community and amongst the general public at large.

Here they are, the Class of 2011:

• Iain Couzin, a biologist at Princeton University, is investigating collective “herd” behavior among populations ranging from insects to fish to birds to humans.

• Milton Garcés, a geophysicist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, uses infrasound for detection and warning of natural and man-made disasters.

• Katherine J. Kuchenbecker, a roboticist at the University of Pennsylvania, is developing interface systems that enable users to touch virtual objects and distant environments as though they were real and within reach, which has applications in surgery, medical training, autonomous robots and games.

• Shaily Mahendra, an environmental engineer at the University of California Los Angeles, is studying how microbes interact with nanomaterials and environmental contaminants, for applications ranging from ecotoxicology and disinfection to biofuels and bioremediation.

• Alysson Muotri, a neuroscientist at the University of California San Diego, is challenging the concept of “junk DNA” through his research on stem cells and the neurobiology of autism.

• Raul Rabadan, a theoretical physicist at Columbia University, is developing computational tools to reveal biological and clinical information from large data sets in areas such as infectious disease, cancer and electronic medical records.

• Pardis Sabeti, a systems biologist at Harvard University and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, is using emerging genomic resources to study the effects of natural selection on evolutionary adaptation in humans and pathogens.

• Clifford Saron, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of California Davis, is researching the effects of intensive meditation practice, as well as brain function limitations in children with autism spectrum disorders.

• Jessika Trancik, a materials scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is working to accelerate the discovery and scaling of new energy technologies aimed at mitigating climate change.

• Adrien Treuille, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, brings crowdsourcing, computer games and simulation techniques together to advance knowledge in areas ranging from fluid motion to how new drugs can best target diseases.

In addition to the program’s advisors, nominators and faculty, PopTech’s key partners in this initiative include Microsoft Research, National Geographic, the Rita Allen Foundation, the National Science Foundation and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

Want to see these new members of the PopTech network in action? They’ll be taking the stage this October at PopTech 2011, following in the footsteps of last year’s stellar class, sharing with the world their remarkable work and inspiring dedication.

Know an innovator working to solve a major global challenge?

Now’s your chance to help speed up his or her progress by submitting a nomination for the 2011 PopTech Social Innovation Fellows program.

We’re looking for 10 to 20 world-changers who are ready to accelerate their path to greater social impact. Fellows attend a five-day, all-expense paid training program followed by the annual PopTech conference, which includes an opportunity to present on stage in front of an audience of thought leaders. They gain the tools, insights, visibility and social network they need to help grow their efforts to new heights.

Check out the call for nominations as well as the 2008, 2009 and 2010 classes to see if the fit looks right, and then fill out a nomination – or a self-nomination – at poptech.org/nominate.

Nominations will be open through March 31. Generous support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Rita Allen Foundation help make this program possible – and so do you, by nominating someone with a big idea and the right stuff to take it to scale.

The PopTech Social Innovation Fellows Program is in its third year of accelerating the work of world-changing leaders, and the Class of 2010 – announced today – continues the trend of offering promising solutions to global challenges.

This year’s class of sixteen Fellows work in such key areas as conflict resolution and violence prevention, energy, environmental technology, international development and sustainable agriculture. They work around the world and use a variety of business models – for-profit, non-profit and hybrid – to achieve their goals.

To get a sense of the full breadth and impact of their work, check out the full list of 2010 Fellows.

In October, at their first gathering, the Fellows will participate in an intensive training program and then present at PopTech 2010 (Oct. 20-23 in Camden, Maine – registrations are available here).

The partners who help make the program possible – including American Express, PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation – are supporting a truly inspiring group of high-potential leaders.

Congratulations to the 2010 Fellows, who join the amazing classes of 2008 and 2009 as the standard-bearers for social innovation and positive change!