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.






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 | |
Anthony Atala | Wake Forest School of Medicine | Máire Connolly | National University of Ireland Galway | |
Belén Garijo | Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany | Manfred Weck | RWTH Aachen | |
Benjamin List | Max-Planck-Institute for Coal Research | Martin Jonikas | Princeton University | |
Brian K Kobilka | Stanford University | Mary Voytek | NASA | |
Burkhard Becher | University of Zurich | Matt Rosseinsky | University of Liverpool | |
Camille Delebecque | Afineur | Michael Jacobs | Royal Free London NHS | |
Caroline Dive | Cancer Research UK | Michael Obersteiner | Oxford University | |
Carolyn "Bo" Aldige | Prevent Cancer Foundation | 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 | |
Esther Ngumbi | University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign | Rafi Ahmed | Emory University | |
Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker | Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich | Robert Huber | Max-Planck-Institute for Biochemistry | |
George Church | Harvard University | Ron Fouchier | Erasmus University | |
George P. Smith | Catholic University of America | Ross Maclean | Precision Value & Health | |
Gerald Haug | Leopoldina, German National Academy of Sciences | Rudi Balling | University of Luxembourg | |
Gordon J. Freedman | Dana-Farber Cancer Insistute | Rudolf Aebersold | ETH Zürich | |
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 | |
Johann-Dietrich Wörner | National Academy of Science and Engineering, acatech | Steve Jackson | University of Cambridge | |
James E. Crowe | Vanderbilt Medical Center | Stewart Cole | École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne | |
Jaquelyn Francis | The Global Warming Mitigation Project | Subhanu Saxena | New Rhein Foundation | |
Jarryd Pla | University of New South Wales | Thomas Südhof | Stanford University | |
Jef Boeke | NYU Langone Health | Tim Appenzeller | Science / AAAS | |
Jean-Marie Lehn | College de France | Ting Lu | University of Illinois | |
Jeremy Nicholson | Murdoch University | Tobias Erb | Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology | |
Joachim Frank | Columbia University | Toby Bloom | New York Genome Center | |
Joao Monteiro | Nature Medicine | Tom Knight | Ginkgo Bioworks | |
John Gyapong | University of Health & Allied Sciences | Ulrich Betz | Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany | |
Jörg Tremmel | Foundation for the rights of future generations | Ulrich Wiesner | Cornell University | |
Kara Bren | University of Rochester | Valorie Aquino | March for Science | |
Kenneth Drazan | Arsenal Bioscience | 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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