Meet the Frontiers Planet Prize 2025 National Champions Driving Planetary Solutions
World’s leading science competition identifies 19 breakthrough solutions around the globe with greatest potential to tackle the planetary crisis
The Frontiers Planet Prize names 19 National Champions – scientists offering scalable solutions to help keep humanity safely within planetary boundaries.
Following an independent scientific assessment involving 100 experts, chaired by Professor Johan Rockström, the developer of the Planetary Boundaries framework, the prize ensures faster global scientific consensus around the innovative ideas with the greatest potential to drive change.
The Earth is facing a cascade of escalating ecological threats. We are rapidly breaching the planetary boundaries that define our safe operating space, pushing Earth’s systems toward potentially catastrophic and irreversible tipping points. The WMO’s State of the Global Climate report confirms that 2024 was likely the first full year with global temperatures exceeding 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, marking the hottest year in the 175-year history of observations.
We must accelerate research that breaks free from the confines of academic discourse and drives real-world, scalable solutions. The scientific community must not only inform but mobilize, because it is through this collective action that the path to planetary solutions will be forged.
As we celebrate the 55th anniversary of Earth Day, ‘Our power, our planet,’ Frontiers Planet Prize announces its third edition National Champions. In parallel with this year’s Earth Day focus on accelerating renewable energy deployment and promoting decisive, collective action, the Prize accelerates the pursuit of evidence-based, actionable solutions for planetary health. It underscores the shared responsibility of ensuring human well-being within the limits of Earth’s life-support systems.
This year’s 19 National Champions are from research teams spread across five continents – exceptional scientists with breakthrough solutions that can be scaled up to keep humanity safely within planetary boundaries. As the world’s largest science competition to enhance planetary health and mobilize the academic community, the prize fast-tracks innovation, impacts and emphasizes the urgency of action required.
The National Champions have been selected by an independent Jury of 100 renowned Earth system science and planetary health experts, chaired by Professor Rockström. The National Champions will now move forward to the final round of the competition, with three International Champions unveiled in June and awarded 1 million USD each to scale up their research.
The 19 National Champions represent a diverse group of researchers at various stages of their academic careers, who have published groundbreaking articles that put forward unique, transformative solutions to stop humanity crossing the planetary boundaries.
With no time to waste in the current climate crisis, their research focuses on a range of areas, including climate change mitigation, community health, and planetary resilience, through which they offer solutions such as optimized carbon capture technologies, enhanced modeling and early-detection systems, and sustainable policy frameworks. All with the aim to mobilize and inspire individuals to actively contribute towards overcoming current planetary health challenges.
Led by Professor Johan Rockström, the planetary boundaries framework presents a set of nine limits within which humanity can continue to develop and thrive for generations to come. Crossing these boundaries increases the risk of generating large-scale abrupt or irreversible environmental changes. With no place to hide in the planetary crisis, the scientific innovations needed are crucial for our collective responsibility to enable healthy lives on a healthy planet.
A direct response to the urgent need for faster global scientific consensus, the prize has already engaged with more than 10,000 active researchers, 23 academies of science, and over 600 leading universities and research institutions from 62 countries, to bring forward transformational and globally scalable research from around the world, with a focus on enabling healthy lives on a healthy planet.
The full list of the 2025 National Champions, categorized by their solutions, is as follows:
Nature-based solutions and ecosystem restoration
Germany: Prof Dr Robert Arlinghaus, Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Ecosystem-based management outperforms species-focused stocking for enhancing fish populations
Italy: Dr Giovanni Forzieri, University of Florence, Ecosystem heterogeneity is key to limiting the increasing climate-driven risks to European forests
Japan: Prof Paola Laurino, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, The ultra-high affinity transport proteins of ubiquitous marine bacteria
Sweden: Prof Zahra Kalantari, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Contribution of prioritised urban nature-based solutions allocation to carbon neutrality
United States: Dr Zia Mehrabi, University of Colorado Boulder, Joint environmental and social benefits from diversified agriculture
Climate change mitigation and carbon sequestration
Argentina: Dr Rafael Pedro Fernandez, Institute for Interdisciplinary Science (ICB-CONICET), Natural short-lived halogens exert an indirect cooling effect on climate
Israel: Dr Uria Alcolombri, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Microbial dietary preference and interactions affect the export of lipids to the deep ocean
Malaysia: Dr Vincent Woon Kok Sin, Xiamen University Malaysia, Curbing global solid waste emissions towards net-zero warming futures
Thailand: Prof Shabbir Gheewala, King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi, Absolute environmental sustainability assessment of rice in Pakistan using a planetary boundary-based approach
Community health and environmental justice
Australia: Dr Arunima Malik, The University of Sydney, Polarizing and equalizing trends in international trade and Sustainable Development Goals
Mexico: Dr Fabiola Sosa Rodriguez, Autonomous Metropolitan University, Construction of wetlands in La Piedad Lagoon: a strategy to mitigate climate change in Mexico
Netherlands: Prof Sjak Smulders, Tilburg University, Accounting for the increasing benefits from scarce ecosystems
New Zealand: Dr Sebastian Steibl, University of Auckland, Rethinking atoll futures: local resilience to global challenges
Poland: Dr Nicoletta Makowska-Zawierucha, Adam Mickiewicz University, Arctic plasmidome analysis reveals distinct relationships among associated antimicrobial resistance genes and virulence genes along anthropogenic gradients
Saudi Arabia: Prof Carlos Duarte, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, A tide of change - what we can learn from marine conservation successes
United Kingdom: Dr Marina Romanello, University College London, The 2023 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: the imperative for a health-centred response in a world facing irreversible harms
Water systems and planetary resilience
Austria: Prof Günter Blöschl, Vienna University of Technology, Megafloods in Europe can be anticipated from observations in hydrologically similar catchments
Canada: Dr Suzanne Tank, University of Alberta, Recent trends in the chemistry of major northern rivers signal widespread Arctic change
China: Prof Xing Yuan, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, A global transition to flash droughts under climate change
As National Champions, each researcher will have the opportunity to share their award-winning research through national and international conferences to facilitate the systemic change needed to safeguard our planet's health. This is made possible through the support of the Prize's strategic partners, including the International Science Council, Future Earth, the Potsdam Institute of Climate Research Impact, the African Academy of Sciences, and the Villars Institute.
The Frontiers Planet Prize Award Ceremony will take place on 17 June 2025 at the Villars Symposium in Villar-sur-Ollon, Switzerland, hosted by the Villars Institute. In line with the theme of this year’s award ceremony, “No place to hide,” each Champion will present their research and engage with an intergenerational audience of key planetary health figures across academia, policy, business, and non-governmental agencies, all of whom have the capability to shape policy and influence civil society.
Professor Jean-Claude Burgelman, Director of the Frontiers Planet Prize said: “Faced with immense threats to people and planet, we need bold, transformative solutions, rooted in evidence and validated by science. Innovative yet scalable solutions are the only way for us to ensure healthy lives on a healthy planet. By spotlighting the most groundbreaking research, we are helping scientists bring their work to the international stage and provide the scientific consensus needed to guide our actions and policies.”
It is time to turn the tide, for the rebirth of Earth’s resilient and thriving ecosystems, driving innovation and transformative action through the mobilization of our scientific community to achieve a global green renaissance.