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 protector (2019)
- Health - Multi drug resistance breaker (2020)
- Nutrition - Food generator (2021)
- Energy - CO2 to fuel convertor (2022)
- Health - Pandemic early alert system (2023)
- Health - Fighting Pandemics with AI (2024)
- Health - Body organ generator (2025)
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 at the Curious - Future Insight Conference or a dedicated hand-over event.
Recent prize winners
| Year | Name | University | Award | Award amount | Story |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Lauren Gardner | Johns Hopkins University | Fighting pandemics with AI | € 500,000 | |
| 2023 | Khalid Salaita | Emory University, Georgia | Pandemic early alert | € 500,000 | Pandemic early alert |
| 2022 | Tobias J. Erb | Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology | CO2 to fuel conversion | € 1 Mio | CO2 conversion |
| 2021 | Ting Lu | University of Illinois | Equally shared: Food generator | € 500,000 | Food generation |
| 2021 | Steve Techtmann | Michigan Technological University | Equally shared: Food generator | € 500,000 | Food generation |
| 2020 | Stephan Sieber | Technical University Munich | Multi-drug resistance breaker | € 1 Mio | Multi-drug resistance |
| 2019 | James Earl Crowe, Jr. | Vanderbilt University Medical Center | Equally shared: Pandemic protector | € 500,000 | Pandemic protection |
| 2019 | Pardis Sabeti | The Broad Institute, Inc. | Equally shared: Pandemic protector | € 500,000 | Pandemic protection |
Future insight prize 2024 was awarded to Lauren Gardner for creating the interactive web-based dashboard used by public health authorities, researchers, and the general public around the globe to track the COVID-19 pandemic. "Receiving the Future Insight prize will further support our mission at Johns Hopkins University to refine predictive modelling and enhance decision-making tools that are crucial for managing public health emergencies effectively. This recognition fuels our commitment to developing new AI-enabled solutions to anticipate and mitigate future threats from any known virus or other biological source.”
Award ceremony recording
Body Organ Generator
A method that allows to re-grow all damaged organs for regenerative medicine.
Fighting pandemics with AI
The dream product is an AI-driven monitoring and modeling tool that can help detect outbreaks early, quickly process data from multiple sources, and predict future scenarios.
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.
2022: Co2 conversion
Food Generation
Multi-Drug Resistance
Pandemic Protection
Media Library
The 2024 Future InsightTM prize is handed over at the Curious2024 - Future InsightTM conference. This is one of the world’s most renowned gatherings on the future of science & technology. Browse past award lectures in the media library.
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 | Kara Bren | University of Rochester | |
| Alessandro Donato | European Space Agenc | Lamia Messari-Becker | Universität Siegen | |
| Angela Belcher | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Lauren Gardner | Johns Hopkins University | |
| Aysa Rolls | Technion - Israel Institute of Technology | Linda Hill | Harvard Business School | |
| Belén Garijo | Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany | Máire Connolly | National University of Ireland Galway | |
| Benjamin List | Max-Planck-Institute for Coal Research | Martin Jonikas | Princeton University | |
| Brett Kagan | Cortical labs | 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 | University of Oxford | |
| Carola Vinuesa | Francis Crick Institute | Mihaela van der Shaar | University of Cambridge | |
| 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 | Orla Smith | Science / AAAS | |
| David Bloom | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health | Otmar Wiestler | Helmholtz Association | |
| David Solit | Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center | Pardis Sabeti | Broad Institute | |
| Dean Radin | California Institute of Integral Studies | Peidong Yang | UC Berkeley | |
| Deborah O‘Neil | Novabiotics | Peter Hotez | Baylor College of Medicine | |
| Don Cleveland | UC San Diego | Peter Piot | The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine | |
| Dorothee Dormann | Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz | Rafi Ahmed | Emory University | |
| Eduard A. Lemke | Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz | Robert Huber | Max-Planck-Institute for Biochemistry | |
| Esther Ngumbi | University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign | Ron Fouchier | Erasmus University | |
| Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker | Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich | Ross Maclean | Precision Value & Health | |
| George Church | Harvard University | Rudi Balling | University of Luxembourg | |
| George P. Smith | Catholic University of America | Scott Spangler | IBM | |
| Gerald Haug | Leopoldina, German National Academy of Sciences | Segenet Kelemu | ICIPE, Kenya | |
| Gordon J. Freedman | Dana-Farber Cancer Insistute | Shahaf Peleg | FBN, Germany | |
| Hans-Joachim Zeiler | Creative Therapeutics | Shinichi Akaike | NISTEP, Japan | |
| Harald Seifert | University of Cologne | Shyam Sankar | Palantir Technologies | |
| Hartmut Michel | Max-Planck Institute for Biochemistry | Stephan Sieber | Technical University Munich | |
| Helmut Schwarz | TU Berlin | Stephen Techtmann | Michigan Technological University | |
| Isha Datar | New Harvest | Steve Jackson | University of Cambridge | |
| Jake Yeston | AAAS / Science | Stewart Cole | École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne | |
| Joe Quirk | The Seasteading Institute | Subhanu Saxena | New Rhein Foundation | |
| Johann-Dietrich Wörner | National Academy of Science and Engineering, acatech | Tanja Weil | Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research | |
| James E. Crowe | Vanderbilt Medical Center | Theresa Mercer | Cranfield University | |
| 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 | Tom Knight | Ginkgo Bioworks | |
| Joachim Frank | Columbia University | Ulrich Betz | Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany | |
| Joao Monteiro | Nature Medicine | Ulrich Hartl | MPI of Biochemistry | |
| John Gyapong | University of Health & Allied Sciences | Ulrich Wiesner | Cornell University | |
| Khalid Salaita | Emory University | Valorie Aquino | March for Science | |
| Katja Krause | Max-Planck-Institute for the History of 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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