Prizes and the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference ( NSRC)

I just realized that the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference (NSRC) includes a student suborbital experiment contest with cash prizes for University of Colorado and some Space Grant Consortium students. Here's the flyer (PDF).

There are some student suborbital experiment proposal presentations (PDF) on the schedule for the conference. I assume these are competitors in the contest.

One of the talks on Friday from Nicole Jordan of the X PRIZE Foundation and Erika Wagner of the MIT XPRIZE Lab is Prizes as a Tool for Engaging Researchers and Students:

This paper will describe the ways that Incentive Prizes can be used to attract high quality payloads for suborbital research and education missions (REM).

Several Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge competitors are featured:

Improving Mission Flexibility with the Hippogriff Propulsion Module (PDF) - Bob Steinke of SpeedUp.

Science When Flight Rate and Turn Time Don't Matter (PDF) - Michael Mealing of Masten Space Systems

Armadillo Aerospace and Purdue University Student Experiment Program (PDF)

Here's an idea for another student competition: ZERORobotics: a Student Competition Aboard the International Space Station (PDF)