Vox Creative and Intel Celebrate People Using Their Brains to Make the World a Smarter Place

For the last eight weeks, with the ongoing #SmartestBrain campaign and contest, Intel and Vox Creative have searched the world to find entrepreneurs who are harnessing the power of collective intelligence to invent innovative solutions to real-world problems.

Today, the three winners have been announced with profiles on Vox - in addition to being awarded a computer equipped with an Intel Core Processor. The goal is to promote the individual’s innovative ideas to the hyper engaged audiences across Vox Media’s authoritative networks.

Christa Hasenkopf, Ph.D. is an atmospheric scientist with expertise in air quality, looking to make the world's air quality data transparent and accessible to anyone by maximising the data for impact. Her non-profit, OpenAQ is enabling powerful climate activism, journalism, policy, and science across the globe by building an open, real-time air quality data hub. 

Land Arnold is a longtime bookseller at Letters Bookshop in Durham, North Carolina, looking to build an interactive map and database to foster a stronger local reader culture, collecting and cataloguing materials about local literacy history for it to be used in classrooms

Amanda Jung is a recent college graduate and Korean American, who is working to gather stories from different backgrounds and people of colour to learn how their relationships with film and media affected their dreams and aspirations. She’s inspired to create a more empathetic world, with a database that houses for anyone to pull inspiration from.

Throughout the campaign, promotional content from Intel was featured on Vox spotlighting entrepreneurs who have made a profound impact on science, healthcare, education and creative culture from building online platforms that embraced open-source and collective intelligence, including: 

Mike Porath, founder of The Mighty, a social network for people with chronic illnesses, mental health disorders and disabilities.

Lucy Fortson of Zooniverse, an online platform that enables everyone to take part in cutting edge research.

Ryan Merkley of Creative Commons, a powerful digital resource that helps creators legally share their knowledge and creativity to build a more equitable world - which will roll out throughout the five week campaign period.

Actress Letitia Wright, supporter of STEM education, joined in on the launch of the campaign to showcase the contest, encouraging her followers to share innovations centred on collective intelligence.