Future Insight Prize
Stimulating scientific and technological progress in the areas of health, nutrition, and energy.
Upcoming Event
View All Events11 Jul 2023
Future Insight prize award ceremony 2023
The Future Insight prize stimulates innovative solutions to solve some of humanities greatest problems and realize the dreams for a better tomorrow. The 2023 topic is the Pandemic early alert system.
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.
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 protector (2019)
- Health - Multi drug resistance breaker (2020)
- Nutrition - Food generator (2021)
- Energy - CO2 to fuel convertor (2022)
- Health - Pandemic early alert system (2023)
What do you think should be the focus of the Future Insight™ prize topic in the years to come? Send in your proposals at futureinsightprize@emdgroup.com.
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
Pandemic Preparedness
The dream product is a pandemic early alert system that constantly monitors circulating bacteria and viruses in all areas of the world with an early warning system for newly emerging pandemics.
Recent prize winners
| Year | Name | University | Award | Story |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | Tobias J. Erb | Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology | CO2 to fuel conversion | CO2 conversion |
| 2021 | Ting Lu | University of Illinois | Equally shared: Food generator | Food generation |
| 2021 | Steve Techtmann | Michigan Technological University | Equally shared: Food generator | Food generation |
| 2020 | Stephan Sieber | Technical University Munich | Multi-drug resistance breaker | Multi-drug resistance |
| 2019 | James Earl Crowe, Jr. | Vanderbilt University Medical Center | Equally shared: Pandemic protector | Pandemic protection |
| 2019 | Pardis Sabeti | The Broad Institute, Inc. | Equally shared: Pandemic protector | Pandemic protection |
2022: Co2 conversion
"Our technology is not providing a single product or process. We rather believe that our synthetic biological approaches have a transformative character that will allow us to design different tailor-made solutions for a sustainable world of tomorrow." Prof. Tobias Erb, Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, Marburg, Germany.
Food Generation
Multi-Drug Resistance
Pandemic Protection
Media Library
The 2022 Future InsightTM prize was handed over at the Curious2022 - Future InsightTM conference. Browse impressions of this 3 day event in the conference media library. Here you also find award lectures of previous awardees.
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 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ada Jonath | Weizmann Institute of Science | Lamia Messari-Becker | Universität Siegen | |
| Alessandro Donato | European Space Agency | Linda Hill | Harvard Business School | |
| Angela Belcher | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Lolke Sijtsma | University of Wageningen | |
| Aysa Rolls | Technion - Israel Institute of Technology | Máire Connolly | National University of Ireland Galway | |
| Anthony Atala | Wake Forest School of Medicine | Manfred Weck | RWTH Aachen | |
| Belén Garijo | Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany | Martin Jonikas | Princeton University | |
| Benjamin List | Max-Planck-Institute for Coal Research | Mary Voytek | NASA | |
| Brian K Kobilka | Stanford University | Matt Rosseinsky | University of Liverpool | |
| Burkhard Becher | University of Zurich | Michael Jacobs | Royal Free London NH | |
| Camille Delebecque | Afineur | Michael Obersteiner | Oxford University | |
| Caroline Dive | Cancer Research UK | Moritz Helmstädter | MPI for Brain Research | |
| Catherine Havasi | MIT Media Lab | Murray S. Campbell | IBM | |
| Chihaya Adachi | Kyushu University | Nadia Tornieporth | Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations | |
| Christina Smolke | Stanford University | Nancy Cox | Vanderbilt University | |
| Christopher Milne | Tufts | Naom Slonim | IBM | |
| Clifford P. Kubiak | UC San Diego | Neil Hausmann | Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation | |
| Daniel Bausch | London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine | Nicholas Donofrio | IBM | |
| Daniel Zajfman | Weizmann Institute of Science | Omar Yaghi | UC Berkeley | |
| David Bloom | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health | Orla Smith | Science / AAAS | |
| David Solit | Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center | Otmar Wiestler | Helmholtz Association | |
| Dean Radin | California Institute of Integral Studies | Pardis Sabeti | Broad Institute | |
| Deborah O‘Neil | Novabiotics | 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 | |
| George Church | Harvard University | 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 | Scott Spangler | IBM | |
| Hans-Joachim Zeiler | Creative Therapeutics | Segenet Kelemu | ICIPE, Kenya | |
| Harald Seifert | University of Cologne | Shinichi Akaike | NISTEP, Japan | |
| Helmut Schwarz | TU Berlin | Shyam Sankar | Palantir Technologies | |
| Isha Datar | New Harvest | Stephan Sieber | Technical University Munich | |
| Jake Yeston | AAAS / Science | Stephen Techtmann | Michigan Technological University | |
| Joe Quirk | The Seasteading Institute | Steve Jackson | University of Cambridge | |
| Johann-Dietrich Wörner | National Academy of Science and Engineering, acatech | Stewart Cole | École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne | |
| James E. Crowe | Vanderbilt Medical Center | Subhanu Saxena | New Rhein Foundation | |
| Jaquelyn Francis | The Global Warming Mitigation Project | Thomas Südhof | Stanford University | |
| Jarryd Pla | University of New South Wales | Tim Appenzeller | Science / AAAS | |
| Jef Boeke | NYU Langone Health | Ting Lu | University of Illinois | |
| Jean-Marie Lehn | College de France | Tobias Erb | MPI for Terrestrial Microbiology | |
| Jeremy Nicholson | Murdoch University | Toby Bloom | New York Genome Center | |
| Joachim Frank | Columbia University | Tom Knight | Ginkgo Bioworks | |
| Joao Monteiro | Nature Medicine | Ulrich Betz | Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany | |
| John Gyapong | University of Health & Allied Sciences | Ulrich Hartl | MPI of Biochemistry | |
| Jörg Tremmel | Foundation for the rights of future generations | Ulrich Wiesner | Cornell University | |
| Kara Bren | University of Rochester | Valorie Aquino | March for Science | |
| 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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