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Merck a leading science and technology company today announced the winners of this years Future Insight Prize. The 1 million prize in the category of Food Generation was awarded today during the Future Insight Days in Darmstadt Germany to Ting Lu Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign USA and Stephen Techtmann Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at Michigan Technological University USA. The researchers project uses microbes to first degrade plastic waste and then produce protein from that degraded waste. In addition during the 2021 Future Insight Days the Spinoff Prize of 30000 was presented to HighT-Tech Maryland USA one day prior to the Future Insight Prize ceremony.The winners of this years Future Insight Prize have created a ground-breaking technology with the potential to generate a safe and sustainable source of food while reducing the environmental harms associated with plastic waste and traditional agricultural methods said Beln Garijo Chair of the Executive Board and CEO of Merck. We congratulate Ting Lu and Stephen Techtmann for their promising research and hope that the Future Insight Prize will help to accelerate their efforts.Anja Karliczek German Federal Minister of Education and Research gave the laudatory speech upon the presentation of the award to both winners during the ceremony.In my lab we focus on microbial synthetic biology which harnesses engineered gene circuits to program microbial cell functionalities for the purpose of uncovering biological design principles and advancing biotechnological applications said Ting Lu. Environmental microbes are capable of catalyzing a wide array of chemical reactions many of which may have industrial applications. My lab studies how complex microbial communities can cooperate to perform functions of industrial interest said Stephen Techtmann. Both prizewinners thanked Merck for the 1 million Future Insight Prize that they were jointly awarded today to further their research Our joint research will allow us to take the plastic waste were generating in the world and turn it into something valuable food and fuel.The two researchers named their project From Waste to Food A Generator of Future Food. It concerns an efficient economical and versatile technology that converts wastes such as end-of-life plastics into edible foods. These foods contain all the required nutrition are non-toxic provide health benefits and additionally allow for personalization needs. This technology promises to transform waste streams into nutritious food supplements thus solving the two problems of increasing food scarcity and plastic waste simultaneously. The core of the proposed technology is to harness synthetic microbial consortia a combination of natural and rationally engineered microorganisms in order to efficiently convert waste into food. The project will comprise four research goals proof of concept for direct conversion from polyethylene terephthalate PET to protein powder goal 1 augmentation of biosafety for food and for the environment goal 2 introduction of nutritional and health-promoting contents goal 3 and expansion of the technology to include additional plastics or other types of waste goal 4. The proposed work will establish a transformative basis for food generation.The Future Insight Prize was first announced by Merck in 2018. It has been awarded annually since 2019 for groundbreaking science for four visionary dream products and is worth up to 1 million2019 Pandemic Protection enabling accelerated protection against newly emerging pathogens category Health2020 Multi-Drug Resistance Breaker solving the problem of antibacterial resistance to multiple antibacterials category Health2021 Food Generation technology to help feed the worlds growing population category Nutrition by converting any nonedible biomass into readily edible and fully nutritional food2022 CO2-to-Fuel Converter generating fuel by photocatalytic conversion of atmospheric CO2 category Energy. This category is open to proposals here until December 31 2021.In 2019 the very first winners of the Future Insight Prize were Pardis Sabeti from Harvard University and the Broad Institute Cambridge Massachusetts USA and James Crowe from Vanderbilt University Medical Center Nashville Tennessee USA for their research in the area of pandemic protection. Merck awarded the 2020 Future Insight Prize to Stephan Sieber from the Technical University of Munich Germany for his project on a multi-drug resistance breaker.The Future Insight Days 2021 presented the Spinoff Prize yesterday and will present the 30000 Johann Anton Merck Award tomorrow July 14 2021 to a scientist in preclinical research in the fields of oncology and autoimmunity. Last years prizewinner Caroline Dive from the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute Manchester UK will participate in the ceremony.The Spinoff Prize established by Nature Research publishers in partnership with Merck to showcase and celebrate global excellence in the commercialization of academic research through the creation of spinoff companies was presented to HighT-Tech College Park Maryland USA yesterday. The spinoff of the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University was founded in 2019 and specializes in disruptive materials science. Magdalena Skipper Editor-in-Chief of Nature presented the award worth 30000. Further finalists yesterday were solar photovoltaic modules start-up Cambridge Photon Technology from Cambridge UK and regenerative medicine solutions start-up Bilitech and med-tech start-up Neuronostics from Bristol UK.
