Business and Finance

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Chatter about ensuing plans permeates any graduation, though it’s not common for the talk to surround which class projects will receive venture capital funding.

This was a hot topic at the first commencement at Singularity University, a school that is backed by Google, operates on NASA’s Silicon Valley campus and gets its name from futurist and co-founder Ray Kurzweil’s favorite term for our technologically enhanced future.

Founded last year with the idea that rapidly evolving technologies can be harnessed to solve problems like poverty and climate change, Singularity University does not offer a degree — though it is working to get some universities to accept coursework for credits.

More than a graduate school, it resembles an incubator for technological ideas that, at the end of a nine-week program, may turn into actual companies with a humanitarian edge.

Starting in June, students spent three weeks attending lectures by faculty members and visiting luminaries to get a basic grounding in fields ranging from networks and computing systems to artificial intelligence and robotics. After that, they chose one of four subjects to study more closely for three weeks. For the privilege, the 40 members of the initial class paid $25,000 apiece.

The premise for the school is that change is occurring exponentially from the frenetic pace of technology and globalization. "We’re teaching students to understand and think about that," said Peter H. Diamandis, Singularity co-founder and CEO of the X Prize Foundation.

In the final weeks of their studies, students split into groups and created projects whose only requirements were that they focus on one of the world’s challenges and have the potential to improve the lives of a billion people over a decade.

The goal, as some Singularity faculty admit, sounds lofty. But with classic Silicon Valley optimism, the faculty, leaders and students seem confident that work done at Singularity U. will change the world.

"Breakthroughs come from young, unconstrained thinkers who have a bold vision of the future and don’t know that they can’t make it happen," Diamandis said, adding that many of the engineers who built NASA’s Apollo space program in the 1960s were in their 20s.

There were no spaceship models on display during a presentation of the projects Thursday afternoon. One team, called Acasa, proposed the use of rapid prototyping machines to essentially "print" affordable housing. Another team, Gettaround, showed an iPhone application and corresponding in-car technology that people can use to rent out their cars to others when not using them — without needing to hand over their keys.

The groups displayed their work to faculty, staff and potential investors. At a reception afterward, venture capitalists mingled with some students.

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