The Virtual Center for Advanced Potential
This program was previously operated by Schmidt Futures. Historic Schmidt Futures activities were funded by diverse types of charitable and non-charitable capital to achieve impact.
Overview
The Virtual Center for Advanced Potential (VCAP) was established to support interdisciplinary research focused on identifying, nurturing, and developing talent globally. The primary objective was to address the imbalance where talent is broadly distributed, but opportunities are not, with a specific emphasis on overlooked and underrepresented communities.
The program successfully created a comprehensive database of 400+ talent researchers from 60 countries and formed an advisory group of 12 renowned leaders in talent research. In the field of talent identification research, the program funded over 10 impactful projects and launched the VCAP Fast Grants Initiative, efficiently disbursing funds to the Mercatus Center and collaborating with experts to establish operational protocols for fast grants in STEM talent development.
"VCAP will develop collaborative research networks across the world dedicated to enhancing our understanding of human performance from a variety of domains, and diverse geographical and cultural contexts,” – Eddie Mandhry, Senior Fellow at Schmidt Futures.
Work we’re doing for science
We build networks of brilliant researchers at different career stages. We lead Virtual Institutes of Science to solve hard problems across locations and fields using modern tools.
