Let us help you get started with answers to some of your most frequently asked questions.

We’re building a vibrant digital ecosystem that powers a community of scientists, entrepreneurs, and creative minds who help solve some of the world’s biggest energy challenges.

ThinkOnward is a collaborative endeavor created by Shell that brings together internal and external expertise, resources, and talent to create fresh ideas for a clean, sustainable energy future. Meet our team and the board that guides us.

The enormous challenges of our energy future will only be solved through unfettered interdisciplinary thinking–a “yes, and” attitude toward innovation and development. ThinkOnward is a single, continually evolving platform with tools and data to facilitate collaboration.

ThinkOnward has attracted scientists, researchers, geooscientists, and energy enthusiasts from all over the world. Not just energy industry insiders. The ThinkOnward community also includes data scientists, AI developers, students, retirees, and creatives looking for the next big thing.

There’s no secret password or handshake. Just register.

You’re not just joining a growing community of smart, like-minded people. Every member has access to the latest projects, challenges, bounties, and learning material so you can contribute at a pace that’s right for you. And there’s much more in store for 2024!

It’s where you’ll connect with our global community. And it’s a unified place to access projects, challenges, bounties, and learning material.

In these crowdsourced competitions, individuals and teams submit data science solutions to energy industry problems. 

Use your skills and creativity to solve some tough puzzles. Level-up your knowledge, access interesting datasets, work on real-world applications, win prize money — or possibly all of the above! 

Browse live challenges, register to join, and keep coming back to see what’s new. If you want something a little quicker, check out bounties.

The sandbox is a great way to test your skills for a challenge or bounty in a low-stress environment where there are no wrong answers. 

Browse sandbox challenges and register to try your skills.

These fast, targeted tasks are organized around a theme. The purpose is to gather and prepare data sources, generate code, generate code that sources data, or other tasks that help find solutions and solve problems.

You can work on real-world applications in a shorter time frame. And yes, there’s prize money.

Browse live bounties and register to join.

They are short-term paid opportunities (1–6 months) for specialized expertise. The Onward team sources talent from our global community for open projects in the energy industry, and then provides white glove project management.

If you’re chosen for a project, you’ll be provided a cloud-based virtual workstation with preloaded datasets, industry software, and technical support so you can work and collaborate securely from anywhere.

Projects are sponsored by organizations and entrepreneurs who need additional perspective from geoscientists or data scientists within a project management and support framework. Projects help sponsors glean multiple perspectives, generate fresh ideas, make informed and timely decisions, and accelerate go/no-go evaluations.

Experienced geoscientists have been asked to provide asset evaluation, opportunity identification, and prospect risking. Project sponsors have asked for help testing new tools or workflows; building, organizing, or cleaning a database; training machine learning models; and labeling data.

Read stories of completed projects on our blog.

Browse open projects and register to apply.

If you’d like to sponsor a project, we want to hear from you. 

Great! Let us know about your idea.

The ventures program supports startups in the climate tech and energy industries with funding, feedback, and guidance. 

The ThinkOnward Innovation Lab is our research and development team dedicated to taking energy moonshots. We tackle huge problems that if solved would change the world.

Absolutely. Check out the events page.

Not at all. In fact, we have a few in-person events coming up. Check out the events page. We also attend, sponsor, and speak at events throughout the year. We hope to see you soon!

We’re always welcoming new team members! Check out our careers page.

ThinkOnward is a remote-first team that gathers quarterly in Austin, Texas. Team members enjoy our open vacation policy, tuition assistance, performance bonus, and a whole lot of other perks. See them all on our careers page.