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.

Dr. 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)

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

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.

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

The dream product generates a high energy-density fuel from renewable energy, water, and atmospheric carbon dioxide with an overall negative carbon dioxide balance.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

Media Library

The 2022 Future Insight^TM prize was handed over at the Curious2022 - Future Insight^TM conference. Browse impressions of this 3 day event in the conference media library. Here you also find award lectures of previous awardees.

Curious2022 conference media library

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

Dr. 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	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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FAQs

- Has the recipient’s work provided important breakthroughs to enable a realization of the dream product?
- Is the recipient’s work of utmost scientific quality recognized by top peer review journals?
- Will the recipient be able to make good use of the prize money to advance research in this area?
The Future Insight™prize will be given out to an individual whose work has contributed to laying the scientific and technological basis for solving some of humanities greatest problems in the areas of health, energy, and nutrition. Their work will help to realize the vision of a dream product of importance for the survival of humanity in the future. In 2019, the Future Insight™ prize is given out in the area of health (dream product pandemic protector), in 2020 in the area of health (dream product multi drug resistance breaker), in 2021 in the area of nutrition (dream product food generator), in 2022 in the area of energy (dream product CO₂ to fuel converter) and in 2023 in the area of health (dream product pandemic early alert system).