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.
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With the Future Insight™ prize, we aim to empower researchers tackling some of humanity’s most pressing global challenges in health, nutrition and energy.

Belén Garijo

Chair of the Executive Board and CEO of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany

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
method to re-grow all damaged organs for regenerative medicine method to re-grow all damaged organs for regenerative medicine
2025 Prize topic

Body Organ Generator

A method that allows to re-grow all damaged organs for regenerative medicine. 

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2024 Prize topic

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.  

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2023 Prize topic

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. 

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2022: Co2 conversion

The dream product generates a high energy-density fuel from renewable energy, water, and atmospheric carbon dioxide with an overall negative carbon dioxide balance.
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The dream product converts any nonedible biomass into readily edible fully The dream product converts any nonedible biomass into readily edible fully
2021 Prize topic

Food Generation

The dream product converts any nonedible biomass into readily edible fully nutritional food within one day without any biohazard.
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2020 Prize topic

Multi-Drug Resistance

The dream product is a series of novel narrow-spectrum antibacterial agents that are able to cure any bacterial infection without induction of drug resistance, empowered by a one hour diagnostic test.
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2019 Prize topic

Pandemic Protection

The dream product starts with a clinical sample of a person infected with an unknown pathogen and produces an agent for cure or to prevent infection of others within a clinically relevant timeframe.
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Curious2022 conference medial library

2025 Award Handover

The 2025 Future InsightTM prize is handed over on July 8th in Darmstadt, Germany and online.  Browse past award lectures in the media library of the Curious - InsightTM conference.

Curious2024 conference media library
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The Future Insight prize builds a network of innovators to enable the dreams for a better tomorrow.

Ulrich Betz

Vice President Innovation, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany

Inventor and manager of the Future Insight prize

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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