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
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.
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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