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 the Future Insight™ prize, we aim to empower researchers tackling some of humanity’s most pressing global challenges in health, nutrition and energy.
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
Nominations for the 2022 Future Insight prize
Nominations are open for the Future InsightTM prize topic 2022, CO2 conversion.
2022: Co2 conversion
Future Insight prize 2021 award ceremony
The 2021 award ceremony took place during the Future InsightTM days. The event featured the Future InsightTM prize for outstanding research towards the dream product "Food Generation", the Spinoff Prize and the Johann Anton Merck Award.
Recent prize winners
Year | Name | University |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Ting Lu | University of Illinois | Equally shared: Food generation |
| 2021 | Steve Techtmann | Michigan Technological University | Equally shared: Food generation |
| 2020 | Stephan Sieber | Technical University Munich | Multi-drug resistance |
| 2019 | James Earl Crowe, Jr. | Vanderbilt University Medical Center | Equally shared: Pandemic protection |
| 2019 | Pardis Sabeti | The Broad Institute, Inc. | Equally shared: Pandemic protection |
Award area
2021: Food Generation
Prof. Ting Lu’s research focuses on microbial synthetic biology, which harnesses engineered gene circuits for programing microbial cell functionality. On receiving the prize, he tells us “As bioengineers, we are called to use science and technology in service of humanity by improving human health and nutrition. While we have generated exciting results, there is still a long way to go from concept demonstration to real-world applications. With the prize, we can pursue high-risk, high-return ideas that can be potentially transformative.”
Prof. Steve Techtmann’s research is in the field of environmental microbiology. “Inside microbes are gene circuits that behave as machinery for manufacturing. A lot of what we are trying to do is see how life exists and what we can learn from life in the environment and use that to solve problems like environmental contamination or food shortages. To be able to pursue interesting angles of research that can have major advances is something this award will allow us to do. I think that’s really exciting.”
2019: Pandemic Protection
2020: Multi-Drug Resistance
The Future Insight Prize builds a network of innovators to enable the dreams for a better tomorrow.
Testimonials
“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
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 | |
| Brian K Kobilka | Stanford University | Manfred Weck | RWTH Aachen | |
| Camille Delebecque | Afineur | Martin Jonikas | Princeton University | |
| Carolyn "Bo" Aldige | Prevent Cancer Foundation | Mary Voytek | NASA | |
| Catherine Havasi | MIT Media Lab | Matt Rosseinsky | University of Liverpool | |
| Chihaya Adachi | Kyushu University | Michael Jacobs | Royal Free London NHS | |
| Christina Smolke | Stanford University | Michael Obersteiner | Oxford University | |
| Christopher Milne | Tufts | Moritz Helmstädter | MPI for Brain Research | |
| Clifford P. Kubiak | UC San Diego | Murray S. Campbell | IBM | |
| Daniel Bausch | London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine | Nadia Tornieporth | Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations | |
| Daniel Nocera | Harvard University | Nancy Cox | Vanderbilt University | |
| Daniel Zajfman | Weizmann Institute of Science | Neil Hausmann | Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation | |
| David Bloom | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health | Nicholas Donofrio | IBM | |
| David Solit | Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center | Orla Smith | Science / AAAS | |
| Dean Radin | California Institute of Integral Studies | Otmar Wiestler | Helmholtz Association | |
| Deborah O‘Neil | Novabiotics | Pardis Sabeti | Broad Institute | |
| Dieter Spath | National Academy of Science and Engineering, acatech | Peidong Yang | UC Berkeley | |
| Don Cleveland | UC San Diego | Peter Hotez | Baylor College of Medicine | |
| Esther Ngumbi | University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign | Peter Piot | The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine | |
| Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker | Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich | Rafi Ahmed | Emory University | |
| Ferdi Schüth | Max-Planck-Institute for Coal Research | Robert Huber | Max-Planck-Institute for Biochemistry | |
| George P. Smith | Catholic University of America | Ron Fouchier | Erasmus University | |
| Gerald Haug | Leopoldina, German National Academy of Sciences | Ross Maclean | Precision Value & Health | |
| Gordon J. Freedman | Dana-Farber Cancer Insistute | Rudi Balling | University of Luxembourg | |
| Hans-Dieter Klenk | Institute of Virology, Marburg | Rudolf Aebersold | ETH Zürich | |
| Hans-Joachim Zeiler | Creative Therapeutics | Scott Spangler | IBM | |
| Harald Seifert | University of Cologne | Segenet Kelemu | ICIPE, Kenya | |
| Helmut Schwarz | TU Berlin | Shinichi Akaike | NISTEP, Japan | |
| Isha Datar | New Harvest | Shyam Sankar | Palantir Technologies | |
| Jake Yeston | AAAS / Science | Stefan Oschmann | UCB | |
| James E. Crowe | Vanderbilt Medical Cent | Stephan Sieber | Technical University Munich | |
| James Le Duc | University of Texas Medical Branch | Stewart Cole | École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne | |
| Jef Boeke | NYU Langone Health | Subhanu Saxena | Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation | |
| Jean-Marie Lehn | College de France | Thomas Südhof | Stanford University | |
| Jeremy Nicholson | Murdoch University | Tim Appenzeller | Science / AAAS | |
| Joachim Frank | Columbia University | Toby Bloom | New York Genome Center | |
| Joao Monteiro | Nature Medicine | Tom Knight | Ginkgo Bioworks | |
| John Gyapong | University of Health & Allied Sciences | Ulrich Betz | Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany | |
| Kara Bren | University of Rochester | Ulrich Wiesner | Cornell University | |
| Kenneth Drazan | Arsenal Bioscience | Valorie Aquino | March for Science | |
| Kurt Wüthrich | Scripps Research Institute | 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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