Stanford Center on Longevity Announces Eight Finalist Teams for 12th Annual Global Design Challenge

The Stanford Center on Longevity is excited to announce eight finalist teams for its 12th Annual Longevity Design Challenge. This year’s challenge, “Reimagining Education and Learning for Long Lives,” inspired creative solutions from university students around the world to address the evolving educational needs of people across all stages of life.

Here are the 2025 Finalists, listed in alphabetical order:

Bloom (School of Visual Arts, USA) – An app designed to help unemployed youth discover career paths and overcome mental health-related obstacles by encouraging them to explore activities and interests.

Flo (Indian Institute of Technology, India) – A deck-building card game inspired by ikigai, taking players on a journey of exploring connections between challenges and personal abilities.

Kahaani (MIT WPU, India) – An interactive educational kit for marginalized children in India that teaches social-emotional learning through games.

KoMi (Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy) – A web platform that helps people develop soft skills and provides a digital skills portfolio.

Mission of Generations (University of Maribor, Slovenia) – A board game that helps grandparents improve their digital skills while bonding with their grandchildren.

Praxice (University of Maribor, Slovenia) – A web platform designed to help young professionals bridge the gap between academic knowledge and the practical experience required to enter the IT job market.

Silver Tech Explorers (Harvard University, USA) – A program designed to enhance digital literacy among older adults through personalized, in-person workshops supported by an AI-powered classroom assistant app.

Veritas (Texas A&M University, USA) – A Canvas course that equips young adults in Pakistan with fact-checking skills to counter digital misinformation on social media platforms.

Map of Stanford Center on Longevity Design Challenge 2024-2025 Submissions

This year, the competition received over 220 submissions from more than 30 countries, showcasing the exceptional creativity and talent of student designers globally. These eight finalist teams were selected by a distinguished panel of expert judges from academia, industry, and the non-profit sector.

Theme: Reimagining Education and Learning for Long Lives
This year’s theme was selected to align both with the Center on Longevity’s New Map of Life initiative, which seeks to build a society that better supports century-long lives, and with the Futures Project on Education and Learning for Longer Lives, a year-long initiative that explores how education and learning systems can support longer working lives, career transitions, and lifelong learning. The Futures Project brings together thought leaders from academia, industry, and policy to create a framework for education that nurtures human potential throughout a century-long life.

The theme encouraged student designers to innovate solutions that address critical challenges and opportunities, from intergenerational learning to new tools for career transitions, ensuring that education evolves to meet the demands of our changing world.

Finals Date: April 22, 2025
The Finals will take place on April 22, 2025, at Stanford University’s Li Ka Shing Center. During this exciting event, finalist teams will present their innovative designs, competing for the $10,000 first prize.

The day will also feature a keynote presentation by Stanford Graduate School of Education professor and SCL co-director Mitchell Stevens and a panel discussion with four dynamic entrepreneurs in the education and longevity space.

The Finals are open to the public, offering a unique opportunity to engage with groundbreaking solutions addressing the future of education and learning. For those unable to attend in person, recordings of the event will be made available afterward.

The Stanford Center on Longevity warmly invites students, professionals, and the general public to join us on April 22, 2025, to celebrate innovation, creativity, and the future of education and learning for long lives.


About the Challenge
Since its launch in 2013, the Stanford Center on Longevity Design Challenge has encouraged students to design products and services that improve quality of life for people of all ages. Each year, the competition is made possible by the generous sponsorship of leading organizations and individuals, including Target, Finance of America, Honda, Halbert Hargrove, Eskaton, Odyssey Group Coaching, Tushara Dilanie, and Wealth Architects.