Draft Templeton Proposal, September 3, 2014 1. Project Title (150 characters max): Finding Genius in an Antidisciplinary World Project date: August 1, 2015 through July 31, 2016 2. Executive Summary (1300 characters max): This proposal responds to a specific problem: how to find genius in an antidisciplinary world. Peer review evaluates work in traditional disciplines, but how do we find exceptional talent in fields that don't yet even have a name? Since 1985, the MIT Media Lab has been doing just this, but on a limited scale. The Media Lab has been a place where scientists, engineers, designers, and their students have worked on big, antidisciplinary questions that fall between established fields. Now it's time to scale this process. The proposed project expands upon this 30 year track record, and seeks to locate other geniuses working in these white spaces between fields, by offering a series of prizes to remarkable individuals working in a Media Lab—like style. Media Lab Director Joi Ito will work with a "kitchen cabinet" of creative thinkers and connectors, who will act as informal curators, bringing order to this process without stultifying it. These curators will award ten prizes; prize winners will distribute half the prize money to five other individuals working on a related topic, who will meet during the year and then convene at the Lab annually beginning in summer 2015. Ultimately, this method of locating geniuses in the white spaces between disciplines should increase the pool of students and faculty who would be appropriate to work at the Media Lab, and will create new methods to identify geniuses who might be missed under traditional mechanisms that tend to reward those who gravitate toward a disciplinary mean. 3. Project Activities (4000 characters maximum): The "Finding Genius in an Antidisciplinary World" project will build on the model of an existing Media Lab program, the Director's Fellows. There are people all over the w