Dream Chemistry Award

The competition was established in 2013 by Robert Hołyst and the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the PAS in Warsaw,[2] with the next competition taking place in 2015. In 2017, IOCB Prague started co-sponsoring the event,[3] and since then the competition has been held every year alternately in Prague and Warsaw.

The competition awards visionary projects from the field of chemistry or chemistry-related disciplines that have the ambition and potential to change the world for the better.[4] The contest is for scientists who are younger than 38 years of age who have been nominated by respected experts. The winner of the contest receives a financial reward of €10,000. In addition, starting in 2019, the finalists receive a reward of €1,000.[5]

The coordinators of the competition are Pavel Jungwirth from IOCB Prague and Robert Hołyst from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the PAS. The members of the Honorary Committee include Josef Michl and Richard R. Schrock, the laureate of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

2019 (Prague):

Winner: Yujia Qing (University of Oxford, United Kingdom), Project: Sequencing life[1][6]

Finalists: Emiliano Cortés (Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany), Jeffrey D. Martell (University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI, USA), Hannes Mikula (Vienna University of Technology, Austria), Yoeri van de Burgt (Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands)

2018 (Warsaw):

Winner: Eric D. Głowacki (Linköping University, Sweden), Project: Abundant organic catalysts for a peroxide clean energy cycle[7]

Finalists: Lorenzo Albertazzi (Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands), Jeremy Luterbacher (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland), Michael Saliba (Université de Fribourg, Switzerland), Alex K. Shalek (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA)

2017 (Prague):

Winner: Jessica R. Kramer (University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA), Project: Glycocalyx engineering to probe the role of mucins in cancer[8][9]

Finalists: Rob Ameloot (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium), Justin Chalker (Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia),[4] Nathan Crook (Washington University at St. Louis, WA, USA), Yogesh Surendranath (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA)

2015 (Warsaw):

Winner: Mircea Dincă (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA), Project: A panacea for catalysis?[10]

Finalists: Denis Menshykau (Bayer Technology Services, Leverkusen, Germany), Eric D. Głowacki (Linköping University, Sweden), Yogesh Surendranath (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA), Jiayin Yuan (Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Potsdam, Germany)

2013 (Warsaw):

Winner: Evan Spruijt (University of Oxford, United Kingdom), Project: The dream of life[11]

Finalists: Hal Alper (University of Texas at Austin, TX, USA), Peggy P. K. Lo (City University of Hong Kong, China), Eugen Andreiadis (Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission, Gif-sur-Yvette, France), Paul Blainey (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA)

• Dream Chemistry Award Website