The forward-thinking organization making the prize possible 

The Frontiers Research Foundation, a not-for profit organization based in Lausanne, Switzerland, was established in 2006 by Henry and Kamila Markram with the mission of accelerating scientific solutions for living healthy lives on a healthy planet.

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The first initiative was launched in 2007 and is called Frontiers. The objective was to create an open scientific platform and an open access publisher to provide free access to as many researchers as possible.

Since then, Frontiers has become one of the largest and most cited scientific publishers in the world, with more than 100,000 published articles and accessed free of charge by millions of researchers every month.

2007
FYM


The second initiative was launched in 2013 and is called Young Minds. The objective was to create a free science magazine edited by kids and for kids. Since then, Young Minds has educated tens of millions of children and their families around the world about science.

In addition, it has introduced children to the peer-review process, where they can interact with and challenge the world's leading scientists, such as Nobel Prize winners. 

2013
FPP


The third initiative was launched in 2022 and is called the Planet Prize. The objective was to create an annual competition that funds and accelerates scientific research to find solutions for the planet to remain within the safe operating space within any one or more of the 9 planetary boundaries defined by Johan Rockström.

Since then, the Frontiers Planet Prize has engaged leading universities and research institutions, national academies of science, a prestigious Jury of 100 led by Johan Rockström, the International Council of Science and several leading sustainability partners from around the world.

2023

Founders

About
Kamila

Co-founder

  • “I want all children to live on a healthy planet. I hope the Frontiers Planet Prize becomes more than just another prize, but a catalyst for rapid change.“ - Kamila Markram

    Kamila co-founded Frontiers Research Foundation and Frontiers Media with the goal of accelerating science by making published science articles open to enable healthy lives on a healthy planet. She obtained an MSc in Psychology from the Technical University Berlin and completed her Masters thesis at the Max-Planck Institute for Brain Research, Germany in 2003.

    She gained her PhD degree in Neuroscience at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology (EPFL), and received an EPFL award for her thesis work on autism.

    During her postdoctoral studies at the EPFL she formulated the Intense World Theory of Autism with Henry Markram. The theory turned previous theories upside down by showing that experimental evidence points most strongly to the idea that autistic symptoms are a byproduct of a super-charged brain that perceives, absorbs, learns and feels too much – causing autistic people to withdraw from an overly intense and painful world. The theory resonated beyond the research community, featuring in popular science magazines and documentaries and published as a book in 2018.

    Kamila is the CEO of Frontiers, which was founded with the vision to make science open with all research papers openly and widely available to the public.

    Kamila has presented the case for how Open Science can accelerate science and maximize return on investment in science at various venues, including at the National Academy of Sciences, Science Foo Camp, TEDx, the Web Summit and the Frontiers Forum held annually in Switzerland. During the pandemic the Frontiers Forum went online, where tens of thousands of scientists, business leaders and policy-makers attended the presentations, and over a million viewed each presentation on YouTube.

    Kamila has built up Frontiers to become the 3rd most cited of the 20 largest academic publishers in the world with over 100,000 editors from around the world. She has been named a L’HEBDO Forum 100 personality, was a finalist for the 2016 Ernst and Young Entrepreneur Award and the 2017 EU Prize for Women Innovators.

About
Henry

Co-founder

  • “The Frontiers Planet Prize is a response to the state of emergency of the planet’s ecosystem. We need scientific solutions fast and the best way to get them is for the global brain to focus on the problem.” - Henry Markram

    Henry Markram is a professor of neuroscience at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). He founded the EPFL’s Brain Mind Institute, the Swiss Blue Brain Project, and the Europe’s Human Brain Project.

    In Lausanne, he runs a biology lab where the team of experimentalists study the design of the brain. Discoveries made include: how synapses learn by judging how well they are timed to transmit information in the brain, the Intense World Theory of Autism together with Kamila Markram; and as co-discoverer, a new paradigm for computing, called liquid computing. In Geneva, he runs the Blue Brain Project, which is building digital twins of the brain to allow simulation experiments on virtual brains running on supercomputers.

    Henry and his team have published over 260 research articles, and he is one of the highest cited neuroscientists in the world. He and his team also used the Blue Brain’s AI technology to extract knowledge from hundreds of thousands of articles and found the main reason why some people get a more severe form of COVID-19 is because of deficiencies in metabolizing glucose.

    He has received numerous awards and honours, including the Bell Labs Claude Shannon Visionary Award and the International Hebb Award. More recently, he founded INAIT, an AI company aimed at developing a new generation AI that is based on the actual architecture and operating system of the brain.

Team

Responsible for developing and interconnecting the global scientific network and generating the daily traction to organize the annual international competition.


Jean-Claude
Burgelman

Director

  • ”Planetary wellbeing is not a luxury but an existential necessity. I want the Frontiers Planet Prize to bring this to the top of the global scientific agenda” - Jean-Claude Burgelman.

    Main responsibilities

    Jean-Claude sets the vision, direction and strategy for the Frontiers Planet Prize team.

    Jean-Claude is a Professor of Open Science Policy at the Free University of Brussels (VUB) and formerly the Head of Unit for Open Science Policy at the European Commission. With a focus on the impact of digital technologies on society, he has 40 years of experience in academia and policy-making.

    During his tenure at the European Commission, Professor Burgelman pioneered the development and implementation of Europe’s widely acclaimed open science policies. His drive and focus is to prove the case for open science and the enormous benefit it offers to people and planet.

    Jean-Claude was the architect of the Open Science Cloud.

    As Chief Editor of the Frontiers Policy Labs in Frontiers, Professor Burgelman explores novel ways how to achieve this by engaging leading voices in the policy and research space. He advocates for the notion that humankind can find solutions to global challenges by opening scientific research, while simultaneously closing the gap between research, society and policy-makers.

    Jean-Claude’s ambition for the Frontiers Planet Prize is to accelerate scientific solutions by becoming the Nobel prize for sustainability science.


Iulia
Pascu

Head of Operations

  • “My generation will never have a stable planet if we don’t act now. The Frontiers Planet Prize is a catalyst to solve this problem.” - Iulia Pascu

    Main responsibilities

    Iulia is in charge of generating, planning and coordinating the operational processes linked to the organization of the competition as well as monitoring the synergy between team members, external suppliers, and internal stakeholders. Iulia is also the point of contact for embedding the Frontiers Planet Prize Award Ceremony into the wider Frontiers Forum Live annual event.

    Iulia Pascu joined Frontiers in 2017 as Event Manager in charge of corporate events. Her previous experience includes seven years of event management at CERN, where she was in charge of conferences and outreach events.

    Iulia was previously part of THE Port, a non-profit association organizing humanitarian hackathons that develop technological solutions to tackle global humanitarian challenges.


Gilbert
De Gregorio

Associate Director

  • “Time is running out for us to keep our planet within its safe operating space, the planet prize empowers institutions, funders, national academies and the scientific community to make their impact” - Gilbert De Gregorio.


    Main responsibilities

    Gilbert oversees the strategic deployment of the prize, and orchestrates the best approach to partner with actors across the global scientific community. He establishes direct contact with the institutions (universities and national academies of science) and is the strategic liaison with the organizations in charge of international events where Frontiers Planet Prize is a member.

    Gilbert joined Frontiers initially in 2016, supporting the Physical Sciences and Engineering journal titles, and most recently held the position of Head of Publishing Program, for the Sustainability, and Biological Sciences programs. In 2020, he contributed to the signing of the UN SDGs Publishing Compact, and launched new titles across the sustainability publishing program. In 2021, he held the position of Head of Content Acquisition at F1000, part of the Taylor and Francis Group. Beyond scholarly publishing, Gilbert also has a range of professional experiences at global level, from innovation consulting within the life sciences, to patent examination in carbon capture and storage, at the European Patent Office.

    Gilbert trained as a green chemist, and holds a PhD in sustainable biofuel production using ionic liquids, at Imperial College.

    Gilbert's ambition for the Frontiers Planet Prize is ensuring scientific communities who are striving to protect our planet from entering the critical zones of any of the 9 planetary boundaries, are recognized and surfaced.


Séverine
Hiard

Event and Project Manager

  • “Turning eco-anxiety into action is not just a personal victory but a collective responsibility, empowering us to transform fear into the fuel for a sustainable future.”

    Main responsibilities

    Séverine is in charge of the internal and external coordination of the Frontiers Planet Prize Awards Ceremony. Her role includes the logistical delivery of in-person events and the implementation of high quality and sustainability standards. She also manages day-to-day communication with the team’s stakeholders and supports social media activities.

    Séverine Hiard joined Frontiers in 2022 as a Senior Event Manager responsible for strategic events. Her previous experience includes 10 years as an Operations and Events Manager at the World Economic Forum, where she oversaw the coordination of the Davos Annual Meeting and delivered annual and regional events in China and Latin America. Earlier in her career, Séverine was a project manager for several years at the Salon du Chocolat in Paris, working on the international development of the project.


Madison
Creaco

Project Coordinator

  • “Our team at the Frontiers Planet Prize is devoted to working towards change to help save our planet. As our planet is changing, this means so should we.” - Madison Creaco


    Main responsibilities

    Madison is responsible for a range of operational responsibilities that are critical to the successful implementation and management of various entities associated with the Frontiers Planet Prize. These include research institutions, national academies of science, the Jury of 100, national and international champions, external suppliers as well as the associations of which the Planet Frontiers Prize is a member.

    To effectively carry out these responsibilities, Madison is responsible for managing and updating all databases related to the Prize's stakeholder community, coordinates, monitors, updates and feeds all the databases linked to the Prize's stakeholder community.

    Madison Creaco joined Frontiers in January 2022 as an Administrative Assistant for the Honoraria. Her previous experience includes five years as a Case Processing Immigration Officer for Immigration, Refugee, and Citizenship Canada where she was in charge of visa applications and administrative coordination. Madison also has several years of experience as a corporate event coordinator.