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We’ve been busy this semester launching two new competitions. Horizons Challenge II grew out of the five-year Space Act Agreement between NASA and the University System of Maryland that we announced a few months ago. Before You Share Xperience hits closer to home: your news feed. Both are open nationwide, so University of Maryland students will go head-to-head with peers from across the country.
“The challenge of our times will be to enable the individual to apply the media, now essentially accessible to all, to the task of separating reality from an encroaching universe of AI slop. It’s a worthy challenge.”
Ted Koppel, veteran broadcast journalist
Houston, we have a problem
Good, because defining it is the whole assignment. The Horizons Challenge turns the Space Act Agreement into a real opportunity for students. It’s built around four focus areas xFoundry and NASA identified: predictive user interfaces, human performance monitoring, autonomous asset inspection, and adaptive learning.
Those names tell only part of the story. Picture an astronaut who needs critical information at exactly the right moment, an expert whose knowledge could walk out the door at retirement, or infrastructure that needs attention before it breaks. These problems don’t stay in orbit.
Students have one semester to dig into these focus areas and make a compelling case for a specific need. They’ll do research, talk with the people affected, and ask questions that get past the obvious.
More than 100 UMD students have already registered, alongside peers from 30 universities. Finalists will pitch at the 2027 NEXPLORE Summit, and the problem the winning team defines could launch our next Xperience competition, challenging students nationwide to solve it.
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Your feed has some explaining to do
Before You Share Xperience takes on a familiar moment: a headline, clip, or claim shows up without its source or context. Over 18 months, multidisciplinary teams will build, test, and launch products that help people make sense of what they see online without telling them what to believe.
Competition advisor Ted Koppel, veteran broadcast journalist and CBS News “Sunday Morning” senior contributor, summed up the stakes:
“The challenge of our times will be to enable the individual to apply the media, now essentially accessible to all, to the task of separating reality from an encroaching universe of AI slop. It’s a worthy challenge.”
We’re grateful to the University of Maryland colleagues who helped make this launch possible: Dean Rafael Lorente, Tom Rosenstiel, and Dr. Sarah Oates of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism, along with Dr. Eric Pacuit of the Department of Philosophy and Dr. Ilai Saltzman of the Gildenhorn Institute. Through our Horizons Council, they graciously contributed their time and expertise to shape one of our most meaningful and wide-reaching competitions yet.
Both competitions are off the launchpad. Now we hand the controls to the students. Stay tuned.
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