Prizes and Competitions

American-Made prizes and competitions are opportunities to compete with other innovators nationwide, demonstrate skill and creativity in a focus area, and make tangible progress on goals through awards, contracts, and connections.

Prizes are known for cash incentives and other resources and recognition, sometimes combined with technical vouchers, while competitions are generally designed as opportunities for high school and collegiate students to gain hands-on experience while developing their skills for the energy workforce.

Compete in a prize or competition

American-Made gives participants access to cash, mentoring, and other resources, including the American-Made Network, an ecosystem of experts providing coaching, collaboration, and tailored rewards—access to world-class facilities, contracts, and cooperative agreements. Regardless of the challenge, participants get valuable experience to prepare for investor and decision maker engagement.

Prizes

Prizes are designed to speed innovation and push creativity along the way. Cash—and sometimes voucher funding to tap the expertise of DOE’s national labs—is awarded in a phased approach to enable timely but accelerated progress, prove solution viability, and build partnerships. The timelines are tight enough to encourage forward momentum while providing enough funding and time to produce quality work. This approach also helps participants maintain momentum after the prize or competition concludes.

A prize might be a good fit for someone with an innovative idea who is looking for resources and funding to advance a solution, or someone able to meet the complex challenges identified in the prize.

Participants:

  • May gain access to faster DOE funding
  • Have opportunities to tackle ambitious goals where people from all backgrounds and skill sets can succeed
  • Can benefit from collaboration with public, private, and philanthropic entities supporting and sponsoring a prize
  • May win cash awards and recognition for excellence in a particular area.

Read about how one prize, the Community Energy Innovation Prize, is driving community-led solutions.

Competitions

Collegiate competitions are designed to give high school, community colleges, universities, and postgraduate students hands-on, career-shaping experiences.

A collegiate competition might be a good fit for students seeking new skills, hands-on experience, or workforce development opportunities.

Participants:

  • May be asked to build a multidisciplinary team, plan and implement project activities, and demonstrate measurable impacts

  • Will be asked to explore a wide variety of topics in the energy industry

  • Can come from a variety of disciplines, including academic studies in science and engineering, business, communications, policy, and social sciences

  • Can be from any U.S.-based academic institution, even if the school has not previously worked with the U.S. Department of Energy.