Frontiers Planet Prize

Recently launched by the Frontiers Research Foundation, the inaugural Frontiers Prize has as its goal, the acceleration of scientific solutions for healthy lives on a healthy planet. The 2022 edition of the Prize, the Frontiers Planet Prize, in the area of sustainability science, seeks applications from researchers who have made scientific breakthroughs with the potential to stabilize our planet’s ecosystem.

The Frontiers Planet Prize will recognize, encourage, and reward exceptional scientists whose work have a measurable potential to stabilize our planet’s ecosystem.

The prizes will be awarded to research that has the greatest potential global impact on one or more of the nine planetary boundaries:

• Climate change
• Loss of Biodiversity
• Biogeochemical flows
• Ocean acidification
• Land use change
• Overuse of freshwater
• Stratospheric ozone layer
• Atmospheric aerosol loading
• Novel entities - man-made artificially produced chemicals on the global market - ranging from plastics to pesticides, and nuclear waste – and many of which enter our environment

Eligibility

• The Frontiers Planet Prize will be awarded to the best research published in established scientific journals, with robust peer-review and transparent publication procedures, within the past 2 years (date of acceptance: 1 November 2020 to 31 October 2022).
• In cases where the winning research is conducted by a group of scientists, the prize will be awarded to the lead scientist who will acknowledge the team in the application and at later stages.
• Winners must be scientists conducting on-going sustainability-related research under the management of an established Government or Corporate Research Institution.
• The competition is open to established academics, emeritus professors and students

Scientific criteria

The Prize welcomes research across all sciences and is open for contributions that focus on one or all planetary boundaries. Research focusing on cross-scale interactions (e.g., from local to global) is eligible.

The guiding principles to judge potential impact are scientific excellence, applicability and global scalability. The following criteria must be met through for all contributions to be considered for the Frontiers Planet Prize:

• The research should clearly contribute to solutions for humanity's ability to navigate the future of the world on planet Earth in the Anthropocene.
• The research must explicitly (analytically) connect (explore implications) to one or several Planetary Boundaries at the Earth system scale (global scale).
• While research can be focused on single planetary boundaries, or single human dimensions of how to develop within a stable and resilient planet, research that explores interactions/relations between at least two or more planetary boundaries should be prioritized.
• Social science contributions are eligible if they emerge from a clear understanding of all the planetary boundaries and their scientific challenges (i.e., reducing risks in the Anthropocene, bending the global curves in the Great Acceleration, avoiding loss of life support systems and crossing tipping points

Award:

Three prizes of CHF 1 million each

Nomination procedure

Interested individuals must submit the attached application form to Meredith Chatman by October 25, 2022. We can select three individuals to go froward. These dossiers are to be forwarded to the National Nominating Body (NNB) for Canada (probably RSC) (date unknown as of yet by sometime in November. The NNB selects the Canadian contingent of nominees to go forward to the Frontier Foundation.