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Emergent Ventures

Emergent Ventures, a fellowship and grant program from the Mercatus Center, seeks to support entrepreneurs and brilliant minds with highly scalable, “zero to one” ideas for meaningfully improving society.

Launched with $1 million grant from the Thiel Foundation, the mission is to jumpstart high-risk, high-reward ideas that advance prosperity, opportunity, and wellbeing. The fellowship provides participants with the short-term resources and support to quickly develop and test their ideas.

In addition to financial support, participants will have access to mentors and networks in the George Mason community, such as Mercatus’ faculty director, Tyler Cowen, and industry leaders across the country. Emergent Ventures is looking to make a bet on talented individuals with unique ideas for changing the world. Sign up above to keep in touch.

Fast Grants for COVID-19

If you are a scientist at an academic institution currently working on a COVID-19 related project and in need of funding, we invite you to apply for a Fast Grant. Fast Grants are $10k to $500k and decisions are made in under 14 days.

If you wish to apply to grants for scientific or biomedical COVID-19 projects, please apply through FastGrants.org.

For non-scientific/biomedical COVID-19 projects, please apply through the Emergent Ventures application.

COVID-19 Prizes

Emergent Ventures is distributing over $1 million in prize money for work combating the new coronavirus. Prizes are awarded when significant success is spotted. To fund a new or in-progress project, please apply for a grant. Read more on Marginal Revolution here and here or at this press release.

EV India

To apply for EV India, click the “Apply Now” button and select India from the “My Project Will Affect” drop-down menu.

Learn More

For more information, please contact us at emergentventures@mercatus.gmu.edu. Listen to the announcement podcast here. Read the press release here.

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