Spotlight
Professor Liam Ball from the School of Chemistry at the University of Nottingham, UK, was recently named as one of the 2025 winners of the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists. The awards, established by the Blavatnik Family Foundation and The New York Academy of Sciences, are the largest unrestricted prizes for UK scientists under 42, with winners receiving £100,000 ($130,000) in funding. The award recognised Ball’s work with bismuth, a non-toxic element, which has enabled safer and more efficient herbicide development and drug production. He spoke to C&I about the work his team is doing.
The 2025 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists ceremony took place on June 4 at the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation in Tel Aviv-Jaffa. Three early-career scientists from Israeli universities were each awarded an unrestricted grant of $100,000 for their groundbreaking research across three key scientific fields: Life Sciences; Chemical Sciences; and Physical Sciences & Engineering. The Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in Israel are given alongside the international awards presented annually in the United States and Britain.
On Tuesday, June 3, 2025, the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in Israel Science Symposium was held at the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Jerusalem. The symposium was opened by Prof. Michal Rivlin, from the Department of Brain Sciences at the Weizmann Institute of Science, with a fascinating guest lecture titled "Vision in Motion: How the Early Stages of Vision are Aligned to Behavior". The symposium included presentations by the 2025 Blavatnik Awards laureates: Prof. Yonatan Stelzer, in the category of Life Sciences; Dr. Benjamin Palmer, in the category of Chemical Sciences; and Prof. Chaim Garfinkel, in the category of Physical Sciences and Engineering.
The prestigious Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in Israel went to three early-career scientists among 36 nominees and also include a $100,000 grant for each one for their groundbreaking research in three fields. The Israeli Broadcast Corporation's English News Program interviewed Chemical Sciences laureate, Dr. Benjamin Palmer, Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He is being recognized for his pioneering research on how organisms form crystals.
Providing many of the world's best researchers, scientists, and universities with support, and funding to discover breakthroughs that solve humankind's greatest challenges.
The Foundation contributes to renowned institutions that showcase the breadth of arts and culture, including performance, exhibition and education.
The Blavatnik Archive is a nonprofit foundation dedicated to preserving and disseminating materials that contribute to the study of 20th-century Jewish and world history, with a special emphasis on World War I, World War II, and Soviet Russia.
