Laureates in the Ninth Edition of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards To

Laureates in the ninth edition of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards to be announced as of January 10, 2017

·  The BBVA Foundation established these awards in 2008 to recognize seminal contributions in addressing the key challenges of the 21st century

·  Each of the eight prize categories is decided by a jury formed by reputed international experts, who are tasked with evaluating the nominations put forward by the world’s most prestigious teaching and research institutions

Madrid, January 4, 2017.- In the months of January and February, Madrid will welcome the eight international juries deciding the accolades in the ninth edition of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards.

These awards, devised and developed in Spain to recognize research and creative work of excellence, now number among the world’s foremost prize families. The rigor, quality and independence of the judging process has earned them the attention of the international scientific community and attracted nominations from a long list of eminent academic and research institutions.

The BBVA Foundation is partnered in the awards by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), the country’s premier research organization.

Each jury will complete its deliberations behind closed doors in the Foundation’s headquarters. The winners will be announced at press conferences featuring a live connection with the new laureate, who will take questions from the journalists in attendance.

For this edition, the membership of each jury has been reinforced, with new experts brought in.

Calendar of laureates announcements

Laureates in the eighth edition were: physicists Stephen Hawking and Viatcheslav Mukhanov in Basic Sciences, for discovering how the galaxies were formed; neuroscientists Edward Boyden, Karl Deisseroth and Gero Miesenböck in Biomedicine, for the development of optogenetics; Ilkka Hanski in Ecology and Conservation Biology, for work that has laid the basis for combating species extinction; mathematician Stephen Cook in Information and Communication Technologies, for defining what computers can and cannot solve efficiently; Robert Wilson in Economics, Finance and Management, for his contributions to analysis of strategic interactions when economic agents have limited information; Veerabhadran Ramanathan in Climate Change, for discovering that other gases and contaminants besides CO2 are altering Earth’s climate; economist Martin Ravallion in Development Cooperation, for setting a global extreme poverty line; and maestro Georges Aperghis in Contemporary Music.

Five of the 79 winners in earlier editions of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards have gone on to win the Nobel Prize. Shinya Yamanaka, the 2010 Biomedicine laureate, won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2012; Robert J. Lefkowitz, awardee in the same Frontiers category in 2009, won the Chemistry Nobel in 2012; Lars Peter Hansen, 2010 laureate in Economics, Finance and Management, received the 2013 Nobel Prize in Economics; Jean Tirole, 2008 Frontiers laureate in Economics, Finance and Management won the Economics Nobel in 2014, and Angus Deaton, 2011 Frontiers laureate, also in Economics, Finance and Management, was awarded the Economics Nobel in 2015.

For more information, contact the BBVA Foundation Department of Communication and Institutional Relations (+34 91 374 52 10; 91 374 31 39; 91 374 81 73 / ) or visit www.fbbva.es