Future Insight Prize 2024 Awarded to Johns Hopkins University’s Lauren Gardner
10 Julio 2024 - 10:10AM
Business Wire
- Award is a research grant of 500.000 € for AI-based solutions
to prevent future pandemics
- Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany CEO Belén Garijo handed over
prestigious prize
Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, a leading science and technology
company, awarded Professor Lauren Gardner, representing Johns
Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA, with the Future Insight Prize
2024 worth 500.000 € for her contributions to develop advanced
Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems to help quickly discover and
control future pandemics.
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“The exemplary work of Lauren Gardner and her team from Johns
Hopkins University made a significant public health contribution
during the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, with her receipt of Future
Insight Prize, we hope she can accelerate ongoing efforts to create
a world that is better prepared to predict and prevent future
pandemics,” said Belén Garijo, Chair of the Executive Board and CEO
of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, when handing over the award in
Mainz, Germany, today.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the interactive dashboard of
Gardner and her team became the most authoritative and centralized
data collection and sharing system for the reporting and tracking
of Covid-19 health outcomes worldwide. The Future Insight Prize
will enable her to further develop sophisticated public health
models and data systems that can enhance international pandemic
preparedness and response capabilities.
At the award ceremony held at the Curious2024 – Future Insight
Conference in Mainz, Germany, Gardner shared her vision for the
impact that the award will have upon her work: “Receiving the
Future Insight Prize will further support our mission at Johns
Hopkins University to refine predictive modelling and enhance
decision making tools that are crucial for managing public health
emergencies effectively. This recognition fuels our commitment to
developing new AI-enabled solutions to anticipate and mitigate
future threats from any known virus or other biological
source.”
Gardner’s current projects include enhancing epidemiological
tools for early outbreak detection, creating a centralized open
data repository, and advancing public health policy integration
through training and capacity-building efforts. Her work aims to
set new standards in using AI for public health and foster robust
global responses to emerging infectious diseases.
The Future Insight Prize was established by Merck KGaA,
Darmstadt, Germany, in 2018 to support groundbreaking research that
offers solutions to major global challenges. The prize recognizes
not only past scientific achievements but is also meant to enable
future breakthroughs. The Future Insight Prize 2025 will be
allocated in the field of regenerative medicine. Proposals for
potential candidates can be brought to the attention of the Future
Insight Prize Jury.
Previous Future Insight Prize winners
Name
Topic
Year
Institute
Prof. Khalid Salita
Pandemic protection
2023
Emory University, Atlanta, USA
Prof. Tobias Erb
CO2 conversion
2022
Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial
Microbiology in Marburg, Germany
Prof. Ting Lu
Food generation
2021
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign,
USA
Prof. Stephen Techtmann
Food generation
2021
Michigan Technological University, USA
Prof. Stefan Sieber
Multi-drug resistance
2020
Technical University of Munich,
Germany
Prof. James Crowe
Pandemic protection
2019
Vanderbilt University Medical Center,
Nashville, Tennessee, USA
Prof. Pardis Sabeti
Pandemic protection
2019
Harvard University and the Broad
Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA Yale University, New
Haven, USA
About Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany
Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, a leading science and technology
company, operates across life science, healthcare and electronics.
Around 63,000 employees work to make a positive difference to
millions of people’s lives every day by creating more joyful and
sustainable ways to live. From providing products and services that
accelerate drug development and manufacturing as well as
discovering unique ways to treat the most challenging diseases to
enabling the intelligence of devices – the company is everywhere.
In 2023, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, generated sales of € 21
billion in 65 countries. The company holds the global rights to the
name and trademark “Merck” internationally. The only exceptions are
the United States and Canada, where the business sectors of Merck
KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, operate as MilliporeSigma in life
science, EMD Serono in healthcare and EMD Electronics in
electronics. Since its founding in 1668, scientific exploration and
responsible entrepreneurship have been key to the company’s
technological and scientific advances. To this day, the founding
family remains the majority owner of the publicly listed
company.
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