Christofer Nelson

Christofer Nelson serves as a scholar on innovation and program manager for Science in the Public Interest and works on the Georgetown University Energy Prize for national community energy efficiency. Christofer previously served as the Assistant Director for Open Innovation at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) where he focused on scaling the use of open innovation approaches, which include incentive prizes, crowdsourcing, citizen science, and Grand Challenges across U.S. Federal government agencies to address national priorities ranging from developing new clean energy technologies to accelerating biomedical research.  He has worked at the intersection of public policy and innovation for many years , working with organizations such as the X PRIZE Foundation, the Case Foundation and the Joyce Foundation, as well as the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy as well as the NASA Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation to help others better understand how to design and use competitions to drive innovation. He has designed, launched and managed programs for leaders in the public, private and non-profit sectors, including top government officials at the White House, USDA, USDOT, HUD, and SBA.