The X Prize Foundation has inspired innovation through a series of contests to further space exploration, human genome study, and automotive energy efficiency. Now the group is turning its sites to oil cleanup, a need that has become all too apparent since the Deepwater Horizon tragedy flooded the Texas and Louisiana coast line with crude oil and natural gas.

Funded by philanthropist Wendy Schmidt, the Oil Cleanup X Challenge is a contest designed to inspire fresh solutions to oil spill containment. As seen with the Automotive X Prize, this challenge will be broken in to several phases designed to help contestants develop a viable, scalable solution that can be rapidly deployed.

A $1 million prize will be awarded to the team that demonstrates the ability to recover oil on the seawater surface at the highest oil recovery rate (ORR) and highest recovery efficiency (RE). The second place team will receive $300,000 and the third place team gets $100,000.