Frontiers of knowledge

The President of the BBVA Foundation, Carlos Torres Vila, championed the power of knowledge during the ceremony for the 16th BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards. Knowledge is the key to solving the problems we are experiencing as a society, at a moment when humanity is going through an unprecedented wave of disruption and faces the challenges of climate change, he said.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Humanities and Social Sciences category goes to American psychologist Elke Weber in recognition of her research into “environmental decision-making and human responses to climate change.” Weber was the first psychologist to join the IPCC, a group of experts to which she brought her knowledge of decision-making theory.

Sir George Benjamin (composer, conductor and Henry Purcell Professor of Composition at King's College London) has been awarded the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the category of Music and Opera for "his extraordinary contribution and impact in contemporary creation in the realms of symphonic music, opera and chamber music," according to the committee.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards in Economics, Finance and Management has gone to Partha Dasgupta (University of Cambridge) for his work on the interaction between economic life and the natural environment. This research gave rise to environmental economics and “provided a framework for green accounting which is now widely adopted for measuring sustainable development,” the award committee noted.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences has gone to Claire Voisin (National Centre for Scientific Research, CNRS, France) and Yakov Eliashberg (Stanford University, United States) for driving forward mathematical thought by bridging the space between two key areas of geometry with special relevance to quantum physics.

Japanese researcher Takeo Kanade has received the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Information and Communication Technologies category for developing the algorithms that underlie the current capabilities of computers and robots in comprehending and interpreting visual images and scenes. His work has enabled key technologies such as self-driving vehicles, robotic surgery and facial recognition systems, and has revolutionized the broadcasting of sports events.

The research undertaken by Mexican ecologists Gerardo Ceballos (National Autonomous University of Mexico) and Rodolfo Dirzo (Stanford University) in Latin America and Africa has shown that the current species extinction rates in many groups of organisms are much higher than throughout the preceding two million years, according to the committee of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Ecology and Conservation Biology.

Ulrich Hartl, Arthur Horwich, Kazutoshi Mori and Peter Walter receive the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biology and Biomedicine for having successfully identified the cellular machinery that drives protein folding, an key process enabling them to fulfill their biological function. Their research, which disproved the findings of Nobel laureate Christian Anfinsen, has opened the door to the development of new experimental treatments for cancer and certain neurodegenerative diseases.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Climate Change category has gone to five European scientists for their analysis of Antarctic and Greenland ice samples to prove the “fundamental coupling” between greenhouse gas concentrations and rising air temperatures across the planet over the past 800,000 years.

Carlos Torres Vila defended the power of knowledge as “the best instrument we have to understand the world” and to face “major disruptions” such as the global environmental crisis, during the award ceremony of the 15th BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Humanities and Social Sciences has been presented to Steven Pinker (Harvard University) and Peter Singer (Princeton University) for bringing vital questions to the mainstream of public debate: the role of rationality, scientific knowledge, and humanistic values, and the moral status of animals. Their work has had a significant influence in shaping the cultural and legal framework of today.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economics, Finance and Management has gone in this fifteenth edition to Timothy J. Besley (London School of Economics), Torsten Persson (Institute of International Economic Studies, Stockholm University) and Guido Tabellini (Bocconi University,) for “illuminating the connections between the economic and political worlds” and “transforming the field of political economy,” in the words of the committee’s citation.

Laser light tools developed by Anne L’Huillier, Paul Corkum, and Ferenc Krausz have led to a new field of research with applications in areas such as electronics, the diagnosis of illnesses, the development of new materials and the search for clean energy sources.

Alberto Sangiovanni Vincentelli, a Professor at the University of California in Berkeley, was presented the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Information and Communication Technologies for “radically transforming” the design of chips that power today’s electronic devices, leading to “the modern semiconductor industry.”

The three award-winning scientists “have expanded knowledge of the evolutionary importance of behavior as a driver of animal survival, reproduction and adaptation,” and have demonstrated the need to incorporate social interactions into species conservation plans, according to the committee of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Ecology and Conservation Biology category.

The BBVA Foundation awarded the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biomedicine in this fifteenth edition to David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper “for their contributions to the use of artificial intelligence for the accurate prediction of the three-dimensional structure of proteins.” In the words of the committee, the winners achieved an advance with huge biomedical potential for the development of new treatments against multiple conditions.

Paleoclimatologists James Zachos (University of California at Santa Cruz, USA) and Ellen Thomas (Yale University and Wesleyan University, USA) identified an anomalous episode  in the planet’s history in which massive emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere occurred, causing a global temperature rise of between 5 and 6 ºC and a massive extinction of species in the deep ocean, which has provided “a very valuable analogy of anthropogenic climate change”, according to the jury of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Climate Change.

Carlos Torres Vila emphasized the power of research, innovation and education to tackle the great challenges facing humanity, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the environmental deterioration, during his speech at the 14th BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards ceremony.

The BBVA Foundation presented the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Social Sciences to Mark Granovetter, “the most eminent economic sociologist in the world,” for revealing the power of “loose social ties” among individuals for people's economic and social performance.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Music and Opera has gone in this fourteenth edition to Philip Glass “for his extraordinary contribution to musical creation and opera, with a major impact in the music history of the 20th and 21st centuries,” in the words of the award committee.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economics, Finance and Management has gone in this fourteenth edition to Matthew O. Jackson “for his pioneering work on illuminating the role of networks in economic and social life.”  His work can be applied to the study of the labor market, inequality and even the management of crises such as the one caused by COVID-19 or Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The fourteenth BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences recognized the contributions of Charles Fefferman and Jean-François Le Gall to mathematical analysis and probability theory, two domains that have applications in multiple fields, from the behavior of fluids to quantum mechanics and the properties of graphene.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Information and Communication Technologies has gone in this fourteenth edition to Judea Pearl for “bringing a modern foundation to artificial intelligence”. The Professor of Computer Science at the University of California (UCLA), has made contributions that enable AI programs to use two of the key resources we humans use to interpret the world and arrive at decisions: probability and causality.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Ecology and Conservation Biology has gone in this fourteenth edition to the ecologists Lenore Fahrig, Simon Levin and Steward Pickett for incorporating the spatial dimension into ecosystem research.The three award winners have made fundamental contributions both to the development of the theory and mathematics of spatial ecology, and to its application to the design of nature reserve areas, wildlife management plans, as well as road networks and sustainable cities, according to the jury.

The jury of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biology and Biomedicine has selected Katalin Karikó, Robert Langer and Drew Weissman for their contributions to messenger RNA therapeutics and the technology that enables our own cells to produce proteins for the prevention and treatment of disease. The first clinical application of their work was the development of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2.

Gerald Holton, who was unable to attend the awards ceremony in person, received the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Humanities and Social Sciences from the President of the BBVA Foundation, Carlos Torres Vila, at his home in Cambridge (Massachusetts). "This award recognizes Holton's great contribution to the understanding of the cultural dimension of science," said Torres Vila.

The Nobel Prizes 2023 have honored the work of five researchers who were previously distinguished by the BBVA Foundation with its Frontiers of Knowledge Awards. The judging committee of these prizes —awarded by the BBVA Foundation for the past 15 years— has shown an ability to get ahead of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, thereby making the Frontiers of Knowledge awards a reliable herald of international scientific excellence. On no fewer than 26 occasions, winners of the Frontiers of Knowledge Awards have gone on to win a Nobel Prize a few years or even just months later.

The ceremony of the 12th and 13th editions of the Frontiers of Knowledge Awards, which took place on September 21 at the Euskalduna Palace in Bilbao, highlighted the value of science and culture in tackling the great global challenges facing humanity beyond the pandemic, such as the environmental emergency, the profound technological transformation and the risk of new economic crises. The event recognized 35 world leaders in scientific research and artistic creation.

The BBVA Foundation has awarded the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Economics, Finance and Business Management category to Ben Bernanke, Mark Gertler, Nobuhiro Kiyotaki and John Moore for their fundamental contributions to our understanding of how financial imperfections can amplify macroeconomic fluctuations and generate deep macroeconomic recessions. Their first works focused on a fundamental aspect that had not been addressed until then: the state of companies' balance sheets and its effect on their borrowing capacity and, therefore, their investment capacity.

The BBVA Foundation has awarded the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Basic Sciences category to Paul Alivisatos and Michael Grätzel for their fundamental contributions to the development of new nanomaterials that are already being applied both in solar energy production and in next-generation electronics. The work of both winners opens the door to new avenues for the production of renewable energies, electronic devices, biomedical imaging techniques, and other applications.