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
2020: Multi-Drug Resistance
2020 Award Ceremony Highlights
Highlight video of the award ceremony that took place virtually on 13th July 2020
View the entire virtual eventProf. 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.
2021: Food Generation
Nominations for the 2021 Future Insight prize
Nominations are open for the Future InsightTM prize topic 2021, Food Generation. The deadline for submissions is December 31st, 2020.
2022: Co2 conversion
2019: Pandemic Protection
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
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 | 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 | 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 | |
| Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker | Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich | Peter Piot | The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine | |
| Ferdi Schüth | Max-Planck-Institute for Coal Research | Rafi Ahmed | Emory University | |
| George P. Smith | Catholic University of America | Robert Huber | Max-Planck-Institute for Biochemistry | |
| Gerald Haug | Leopoldina, German National Academy of Sciences | Ron Fouchier | Erasmus University | |
| Gordon J. Freedman | Dana-Farber Cancer Insistute | Ross Maclean | Precision Value & Health | |
| Hans-Dieter Klenk | Institute of Virology, Marburg | Rudi Balling | University of Luxembourg | |
| Hans-Joachim Zeiler | Creative Therapeutics | Rudolf Aebersold | ETH Zürich | |
| Harald Seifert | University of Cologne | Scott Spangler | IBM | |
| Helmut Schwarz | TU Berlin | Segenet Kelemu | ICIPE, Kenya | |
| Isha Datar | New Harvest | Shinichi Akaike | NISTEP, Japan | |
| Jake Yeston | AAAS / Science | Shyam Sankar | Palantir Technologies | |
| James E. Crowe | Vanderbilt Medical Cent | Stefan Oschmann | Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany | |
| James Le Duc | University of Texas Medical Branch | Stephan Sieber | Technical University Munich | |
| Jef Boeke | NYU Langone Health | Stewart Cole | École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne | |
| Jean-Marie Lehn | College de France | Subhanu Saxena | Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation | |
| Jeremy Nicholson | Murdoch University | Thomas Südhof | Stanford University | |
| Joachim Frank | Columbia University | Tim Appenzeller | Science / AAAS | |
| Joao Monteiro | Nature Medicine | Toby Bloom | New York Genome Center | |
| John Gyapong | University of Health & Allied Sciences | Tom Knight | Ginkgo Bioworks | |
| Kara Bren | University of Rochester | Ulrich Betz | Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany | |
| Kenneth Drazan | Arsenal Bioscience | Ulrich Wiesner | Cornell University | |
| Kurt Wüthrich | Scripps Research Institute | Yang Shao-Horn | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | |
| Linda Hill | Harvard Business School |
All winners of the Future Insight Prize after being awarded are invited to join the jury for subsequent years.
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