Future Insight Prize
Stimulating scientific and technological progress in the areas of health, nutrition, and energy.
REALIZING THE DREAMS FOR A BETTER TOMORROW
At the occasion of our 350th anniversary, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany launched the Future Insight prize to stimulate innovative solutions to solve some of humanities greatest problems and to realize the dreams for a better tomorrow in the areas of health, nutrition and energy. The Future Insight prize will put the vision for ambitious dream products of global importance for humankind into the world and will trigger curiosity and creativity worldwide on how to make this vision a reality. We intend to give out up to EUR 1,000,000 annually for 35 years to incentivize people whose work has enabled significant progress towards making this vision a reality via discovering new ground-breaking science or via development of enabling technologies.
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Creating the vision for ambitious dream products of global importance for humankind.
With this award, we aim to stimulate groundbreaking science and innovative development of key products or technologies, to bring meaningful visions to life for the benefit of humanity.
We can make it happen
The Future Insight prize puts the vision for ambitious dream products of global importance for humankind into the world and triggers curiosity and creativity on how to make these visions a reality.
The prize will be awarded annually from 2019 onwards to honor outstanding achievements in science & technology towards a ground‐breaking innovation important for the future of humanity in the areas:
- Health - Pandemic Protection (2019)
- Health - Multi Drug Resistance (2020)
- Nutrition - Food Generator (2021)
- Energy - CO2 Conversion (2022)
Selection Process
- A jury comprising experts from all over the world will identify suitable candidates for the Future Insight prize
- Additionally, proposals for Future Insight Prize candidates can be sent to the jury (no self-nominations)
- Amongst all of these candidates, the jury will select the top individuals whom are invited to submit a formal application for the prize
- The jury will evaluate these applications and select the winner of the Future Insight prize
- The winner will be publicly announced and present their research at the Future Insight conference
2021: Food Generation
Future Insight prize 2021 award ceremony
Sign up for the Future InsightTM days, July 12-14. Featuring the Future InsightTM prize for outstanding research towards the dream product "Food Generation", the Spinoff Prize and the Johann Anton Merck Award.
2022: Co2 conversion
2019: Pandemic Protection
2020: Multi-Drug Resistance
Prof. Stephan Sieber’s (b. 1976) research field is bioorganic chemistry. The aim of his work is to develop new drugs for multidrug-resistant bacteria. His research is based on methods which combine synthetic chemistry, functional proteomics, cell biology and mass spectrometry. This approach enables the discovery of new active substances, some of which are currently being optimized for medical application.
2020 Award Ceremony Highlights
Highlight video of the award ceremony that took place virtually on 13th July 2020
View the entire virtual eventTestimonials
“The Future Insight Prize is great because it sets a grand challenge and seeks a solution to societies greatest future needs.” Prof. Dr. Daniel Nocera - Harvard University
"The Future Insight Prize is great because it will foster scientific innovation in areas critical to humanity's future.“ Professor Martin Jonikas - Princeton University
“The Future Insight Prize in Pandemic Protection is great because it is a clear expression of commitment to society and global health.” Dr. Sir Michael Jacobs – Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust
"The Future Insight Prize is great because it shows a 350-year old company is thinking about the next 350 years.” Isha Datar – CEO New Harvest
The Future Insight Prize builds a network of innovators to enable the dreams for a better tomorrow.
Future Insight Prize Jury
Jury Member | Affiliation | Jury Member | Affiliation | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Angela Belcher | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Linda Hill | Harvard Business School | |
| Belen Garijo | Merck KGaA Darmstadt, Germany | Lolke Sijtsma | University of Wageningen | |
| Benjamin List | Max-Planck-Institute for Coal Research | Máire Connolly | National University of Ireland Galway | |
| Camille Delebecque | Afineur | Manfred Weck | RWTH Aachen | |
| Carolyn "Bo" Aldige | Prevent Cancer Foundation | Martin Jonikas | Princeton University | |
| Catherine Havasi | MIT Media Lab | Mary Voytek | NASA | |
| Chihaya Adachi | Kyushu University | Matt Rosseinsky | University of Liverpool | |
| Christina Smolke | Stanford University | Michael Jacobs | Royal Free London NHS | |
| Christopher Milne | Tufts | Michael Obersteiner | Oxford University | |
| Clifford P. Kubiak | UC San Diego | Moritz Helmstädter | MPI for Brain Research | |
| Daniel Bausch | London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine | Murray S. Campbell | IBM | |
| Daniel Nocera | Harvard University | Nadia Tornieporth | Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations | |
| Daniel Zajfman | Weizmann Institute of Science | Nancy Cox | Vanderbilt University | |
| David Bloom | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health | Neil Hausmann | Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation | |
| David Solit | Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center | Nicholas Donofrio | IBM | |
| Dean Radin | California Institute of Integral Studies | Orla Smith | Science / AAAS | |
| Deborah O‘Neil | Novabiotics | Otmar Wiestler | Helmholtz Association | |
| Dieter Spath | National Academy of Science and Engineering, acatech | Pardis Sabeti | Broad Institute | |
| Don Cleveland | UC San Diego | Peidong Yang | UC Berkeley | |
| Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker | Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich | Peter Hotez | Baylor College of Medicine | |
| Ferdi Schüth | Max-Planck-Institute for Coal Research | Peter Piot | The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine | |
| George P. Smith | Catholic University of America | Rafi Ahmed | Emory University | |
| Gerald Haug | Leopoldina, German National Academy of Sciences | Robert Huber | Max-Planck-Institute for Biochemistry | |
| Gordon J. Freedman | Dana-Farber Cancer Insistute | Ron Fouchier | Erasmus University | |
| Hans-Dieter Klenk | Institute of Virology, Marburg | Ross Maclean | Precision Value & Health | |
| Hans-Joachim Zeiler | Creative Therapeutics | Rudi Balling | University of Luxembourg | |
| Harald Seifert | University of Cologne | Rudolf Aebersold | ETH Zürich | |
| Helmut Schwarz | TU Berlin | Scott Spangler | IBM | |
| Isha Datar | New Harvest | Segenet Kelemu | ICIPE, Kenya | |
| Jake Yeston | AAAS / Science | Shinichi Akaike | NISTEP, Japan | |
| James E. Crowe | Vanderbilt Medical Cent | Shyam Sankar | Palantir Technologies | |
| James Le Duc | University of Texas Medical Branch | Stefan Oschmann | Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany | |
| Jef Boeke | NYU Langone Health | Stephan Sieber | Technical University Munich | |
| Jean-Marie Lehn | College de France | Stewart Cole | École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne | |
| Jeremy Nicholson | Murdoch University | Subhanu Saxena | Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation | |
| Joachim Frank | Columbia University | Thomas Südhof | Stanford University | |
| Joao Monteiro | Nature Medicine | Tim Appenzeller | Science / AAAS | |
| John Gyapong | University of Health & Allied Sciences | Toby Bloom | New York Genome Center | |
| Kara Bren | University of Rochester | Tom Knight | Ginkgo Bioworks | |
| Kenneth Drazan | Arsenal Bioscience | Ulrich Betz | Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany | |
| Kurt Wüthrich | Scripps Research Institute | Ulrich Wiesner | Cornell University | |
| Yang Shao-Horn | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
All winners of the Future Insight Prize after being awarded are invited to join the jury for subsequent years.
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