It is one of the most elite universities in the world - where each and every graduate is expected to go on to become a billionaire, future world leader, or both.
Yet despite being more exclusive than Oxford, MIT and Harvard, most people have never even heard of it.
Singularity University, a small unaccredited institute based at Nasa's research centre in northern California, is attracting the brightest minds in America and beyond.
It may not offer traditional degrees and students leave without any formal qualification, but their every step is being keenly watched by Silicon Valley's smartest and wealthiest.
"The best way to describe the experience of being a student at SU is to say that it is an Ivy League university from the future: the admissions process is from the current year, but the curriculum is from the year 2020," said Dr Roman Yampolskiy, a student from Latvia.
"Biology, physics, computer science are replaced with synthetic biology, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence."
The university gets its name from the theory of "singularity" written about by its co-founder Ray Kurzweil, a computer scientist - the inevitable moment when machines will surpass human intelligence.
Ray Kurzweil
Rather than feeling threatened by ever-advancing technology, however, students are taught to harness it to help solve some of the planet's greatest humanitarian problems, such as famine and climate change.
At the start of the university's 10-week summer course they are set the "grand challenge" of coming up with ways to help no fewer than one billion people within a decade. By its end, they are expected to have workable ideas to pitch to potential investors.
More than 4,000 people from as many as 120 countries apply each year for the $25,000 (£15,000) course - the longest of a range of different programmes offered throughout the year. With only 80 places each summer, the acceptance rate stands at just two per cent.
Singularity University in Silicon Valley (Steve Rhodes)
To keep up with what the university calls the "exponential growth of technology", the syllabus has to be re-written fives times a year, while the roster of guest speakers changes almost as frequently.
Over the last few years they have been addressed by figures ranging from Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin to Craig Venter - one of the first scientists to sequence the human genome - and from the film director, James Cameron, to the actress Jodie Foster.
The world of high technology was quick to embrace its guiding ethos, including its most-celebrated company Google, as well as Cisco, Nokia and Genentech, who all lined up to be partners of the university when it opened in 2009.
Larry Page, Google's CEO, a member of the "founding circle", said of Singularity: "If I was a student, this is where I'd want to be."
Lessons take place in a classroom just a stone's throw from Google's Mountain View headquarters, and in the considerable shadow of Nasa's airship garage Hangar One - one of largest free-standing structures in the world.
A test of the 3-D printer in a microgravity-like environment simulated on an airplane that flies parabolas (Made in Space)
When The Telegraph visits, students are furiously hard at work on their grand challenge projects, before their final presentations later this month.
"What if we just alter the number of electrons?" one student asks the others hunched in his group.
"Don't be stupid, that would completely f*** up the calibration," his older teammate replies.
They are momentarily interrupted by a robot clattering into the room. After a digital introduction, it is identified as the embodiment of Dr Daniel Kraft - who chairs the university's neuroscience department - on a call from Los Angeles, remotely controlling a screen mounted on a motorised 5ft 2in-tall stand.
A touch of his keyboard several hundred miles away takes the "telepresence" robot back out of the room and minds focus again on the task at hand.
Each student has gone through a rigorous selection process to be here - and many of those accepted will have already founded at least one company.
Chief executives, inventors, doctors and quantum physicists regularly apply. The then-head of the Pentagon's Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency once took a class.
This summer students are from all over the world, including Germany, Israel, Brazil, India and China as well as four from America. The university's youngest student so far was 19 and its oldest, 63.
Cosima Gretton, 26 - the only British participant in this year's summer programme - is a few years younger than most of the others, but her academic record is just as impressive.
She has a first-class degree in experimental psychology from Oxford University and is just about to finish a four-year medical degree at King's College.
Cosima Gretton
She was just 23 when she co-founded her first company, and won a place on the course for her work on a mobile app that helps people assess moles on their skin for signs of damage by ultra-violet light.
"Coming to Singularity is one of the most intellectually challenging things I think I've ever done," she says during a short break from class in the blazing Californian sun. "It's one of the rare times you can achieve something as a student that actually has real-world implications."
For her final project, she is working with four others on creating carbon nanotube transistors to test saliva for the presence of biomarkers that indicate illnesses such as gastric cancer and diabetes.
If the transistors can be made in the form of microchips they could be mass-produced, potentially saving hundreds of thousands of lives through early detection and treatment.
"The best way to describe us is doctrepreneurs, although I hate using the term," said Ms Gretton, blushing. "We are combining health and technology and looking for ways to push the limits of what we are currently able to do."
Every student has access to the "innovation lab", complete with the most cutting-edge technology - from 3D, gypsum-powder colour printers to unmanned aerial drones and virtuality reality glasses - to help them create prototypes of their ideas.
Josie Ensor and her 3D-printed model (credit: Inna Shnayder)
Its faculty is unparalleled. One of the partners, Mr Kurzweil, is a computer scientist, futurist, chief engineer at Google and author of a book on artificial intelligence called The Singularity is Near.
In 1999 he made 108 predictions of where the world would be in 2009. He was correct on 89 of them, including the creation of the e-reader, the 3G internet, and the year in which computers would beat the best human chess players.
His estimate for the year computers will ultimately overtake humans? 2045.
Another founder, Peter Diamandis, set up the X-Prize, which offers large cash awards for inventions that could benefit mankind, and the company Zero G, which enables wealthy passengers to experiencing weightlessness aboard a zero-gravity plane.
Talking about why he started the university, Mr Diamandis said: "I realised there was no place on the planet where people can really learn about the fields that are in rapid exponential growth - artificial intelligence, robotics, biotechnology, quantum computing. Yet these are the things that together can be used to solve humanity's problems.
"Singularity enabled us to cast a global net, to find people at the top of their game and bring them together... We expect the next generation of multibillion-dollar companies to come out of this university."
Some of the start-ups to come out of Singularity are well on their way.
The university, which last year went from being a non-profit organisation to one of the US's first benefit corporations - which makes money, but does not seek profit as its sole objective - has proved to be quite the business incubator.
It invites well-known venture capitalists to the students' presentations at the end of term, and it is not unknown for some to throw big money at a particularly promising idea.
Matternet, from the 2012 class, received half a million dollars from Andreessen Horowitz for a drone which is able to airdrop aid and supplies in hard-to-reach areas in developing countries.
Made in Space, a company formed by students from the 2010 intake, developed a 3D printer which allows astronauts to design and build their own tools and shuttle parts on the International Space Station.
It received $125,000 from Nasa and won approval to send the printer up to ISS this month aboard the SpaceX CRS-4 rocket.
"The whole education system needs to take a big step forward," said Ross Shott, managing director of the graduate studies programme "Things are moving so rapidly it's being left behind.
"Ours is a first-of-a-kind curriculum - what we teach here, people would pay millions to know. Who needs academic accreditation?"
