Singularity University: the school for changing the world - in pictures

Students prepare for the first commencement - or graduation speech - at Singularity University in Mountain View, USA. The summer course is a nine-week hothouse that allows a hand-picked selection of bright thinkers to get in cutting-edge thinking from some of the world's most talented technologists Photograph: Russel A. Daniels/AP

Over the summer, 40 students with diverse backgrounds – among them medicine, physics, computing and law – were brought together and given an intensive training course in the most important futuristic ideas. The ultimate objective? As its slogan says: 'Preparing humanity for accelerating technological change.' Photograph: singularityu.org

The students (or their sponsors) have paid $25,000 (£15,000) each to attend this hi-tech summer camp. The cost was not a deterrent, however: staff had to sift through more than 1,200 applications, says Salim Ismail, the executive director of the project. Photograph: singularityu.org

One student said: 'I don't think there's such a thing as a normal life after SU. It just changes the way you see the world. Now when someone says anything less than a billion people, it doesn't seem like a big deal. The numbers, the scale, has drastically changed. The vision is so much bigger.' Photograph: singularityu.org

The final project phase was intended to let the students demonstrate what they had learned, rather than produce blunt commercial pitches – but by the time the presentations came along, some of the students were clearly eyeing investment from the gaggle of venture capitalists gathered in the audience Photograph: singularityu.org

Vint Cerf was among visitors to the university, along with Bob Metcalfe. The pair are often called the 'fathers of the internet' Photograph: singularityu.org

Yonatan Adiri was elected the GSP-09 class president Photograph: singularityu.org

Co-founder of Singularity University Peter Diamandis. He is a pioneer of personal space flight and the founder of the X Prize foundation Photograph: Russel A. Daniels/AP

Diamindis's fellow founder Ray Kurzweil, who has a reputation as something of a maverick – he believes that computers will become independently intelligent in the near future, for example Photograph: Russel A. Daniels/AP