Fearless ideas.
Turning grand challenges into opportunities.
The Xperience Competition is xFoundry's flagship program, designed to harness the innovative potential of students to address society's most pressing issues.

The grand prize is the launch of a new venture...

... and a grand challenge solved.

$250K - $2M in investment
Career on the venture's product team
Salary and equity stake
Experienced CXO network
12-minute documentary

Xperience Competition Phases

Discover | Create | Accelerate
Target selection
NEXPLORE 2040 Summit

This visionary symposium, held in partnership with NASA, sets the stage for the upcoming Xperience Competition grand challenge—bridging local innovation with NASA's ambitious 2040 vision for lunar colonization.

What to expect

A 3-day symposium that brings together pioneers, visionaries, and creatives across all disciplines to explore how cutting-edge technology, arts, and innovation can converge to shape the future.

At NEXPLORE 2040, attendees vote on the specific topic for the upcoming Xperience competition, ensuring that our focus aligns with the most pressing issues identified by experts and innovators.

Ideate | Develop | Pitch
Competition
From concept to minimum viable product

Over the next 15 months, student teams will develop solutions directly addressing the grand challenge chosen at NEXPLORE 2040. Throughout the competition, they’ll have access to the xFoundry Resource MatriX to support and refine their solutions.

What to expect

A 15-month journey of intense collaboration, learning, and growth. The Xperience Competition culminates in a Shark Tank-style pitch event, where teams present their solutions to a panel of judges for a chance to launch a venture around their solution with up to $2M in investment.

  • Ideation: Students form multidisciplinary teams and brainstorm solutions to the targeted grand challenge
  • Development: Teams develop the minimum viable products (MVPs) and comprehensive business plans
  • Refinement: Teams iterate on the solution based on mentor feedback and market research
Launch | scale | impact
Venture launch
From MVP to venture

xFoundry transforms winning solutions into real-world ventures, bridging innovation from local impact to NASA's space exploration goals.

What to expect

A 3-day symposium that brings together pioneers, visionaries, and creatives across all disciplines to explore how cutting-edge technology, arts, and innovation can converge to shape the future.

  • Launch: Refining the MVP into a market-ready product or service
  • Scale: Growing local solutions to solve global problems
  • Impact: Solving near-term challenges while addressing future demand
It's so important for folks like you to step up just like you have and make sure that we make a difference.
Glenn Ivey, J.D.
U.S. Representative
Maryland's 4th Congressional District
Don’t leave this here. Scale it. Make it a system wide endeavor.
Jay A. Perman, M.D.
Chancellor
University System of Maryland
Our team gets most of its strength from the fact that we come from many different colleges and we study many different things.
Riya Kadaru '26
B.S. Electrical Engineering
A. James Clark School of Engineering - University of Maryland, College Park
One thing that really makes  Xperience unique is the interdisciplinarity. The combined forces of the interdisciplinarity of the teaching team and of the students brings a really unique combination of different skills.
Christina Hnatov
Xperiment Faculty (XPER 433) | Lecturer
xFoundry@UMD | Academy of Innovation & Entrepreneurship