February 1, 2018 (Berlin, Germany) – In their second year of cooperation, the Breakthrough Prize and ResearchGate, the professional network for scientists, announce the opening of public nominations for the 2019 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, Life Sciences and Mathematics. ResearchGate will raise awareness of the nominations among their network of 14 million verified scientists. Nominations can be submitted online today through April 30, 2018.
For the seventh year, the Breakthrough Prize, dubbed ‘The Oscars of Science’ and the world’s largest science prize, will honor top scientists from across the globe, handing out up to four prizes in Life Sciences, one in Fundamental Physics and one in Mathematics. Each prize comes with a $3 million award. In addition, up to six New Horizons Prizes, each for $100,000, will be presented to promising early-career researchers in the fields of Fundamental Physics and Mathematics. Awards for junior researchers in mathematics and physics are also available. Prizes will be awarded in late 2018, during a live, globally televised gala awards ceremony in Silicon Valley.
A professional network, ResearchGate connects scientists from 193 countries and all fields, including 600 Breakthrough Prize and New Horizons Prize winners. On the network, members share their research, including their current work such as raw data, working papers and preprints. They document this research in over 1.7million projects, a real-time collaboration feature that opens the door on what’s presently happening in labs. By nominating their peers for the Breakthrough Prize based on this insight, members put today’s outstanding research in the spotlight.
ResearchGate was founded in 2008 by the physicians Dr. Ijad Madisch and Dr. Sören Hofmayer, along with computer specialist Horst Fickenscher. The company’s mission is to connect the world of science and make research open to all. 14million researchers have made more than 140 million connections on the network, and share over half a million updates about their research daily. ResearchGate has completed four rounds of financing from Benchmark, Founders Fund, Bill Gates, Tenaya Capital, Wellcome Trust, Goldman Sachs Investment Partners, and Four Rivers Group.
The Breakthrough Prize was founded by Sergey Brin, Pony Ma, Yuri and Julia Milner, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, and Anne Wojcicki to celebrate achievements in Fundamental Physics, Life Sciences and Mathematics. The awards are presented at an annual globally televised ceremony, followed by a day of lectures and discussions co-sponsored by Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley and University of California, San Francisco. In addition to the Breakthrough Prize, awards for junior researchers in mathematics and physics are also handed out yearly.
