Who will be the winner of the VinFuture Prize 2025?

The 2025 nominations were truly outstanding. Selecting the winners was a real challenge for the Awards Jury.

That is the sharing of Professor Pamela Christine Ronald (University of California, Davis, USA), a scientist honored at the VinFuture Prize 2022 and a member of the VinFuture Prize Council 2025.

Professor Pamela Christine Ronald attends VinFuture 2025 Science and Technology Week.

PV: Since the VinFuture Prize 2022, how has your work developed so far?

Prof. Pamela Christine Ronald: The work I received the award for in 2022 was for discovering a gene, called the submergence resistance gene. It was a team effort.

What I bring to VinFuture 2025 is the result of my research with a researcher, my colleague Flor Ercoli. She used to work in my lab as a researcher, but is now starting her own lab at the University of California, Riverside (UCR). We discovered a gene that helps the root system of plants grow, develop and expand rapidly, thereby reducing methane emissions by 40%.

Since you won the prize and were honored at VinFuture 2022, what connections have you had with agronomists in Vietnam over the past three years? How far has that initial collaboration progressed?

I have had the opportunity to attend the VinFuture Prize twice. I visited the Vietnam National University of Agriculture . I am learning about practical ways to reduce methane emissions. You have many very talented scientists who are applying what we call 'alternate wetting and drying', which helps reduce methane emissions.

This time, I had the opportunity to visit the Biotechnology Center. Unfortunately, I have not had the opportunity to welcome Vietnamese students or researchers to work and research in my laboratory. Hopefully in the future, that will become a reality.

After being honored at the VinFuture Prize 2022, you took on a new role as a member of the Prize Council. As both a nominee and a judge for such a big prize, how do you feel? Is there any difference in the years you worked with the prize?

When I received the award in 2022, I was extremely excited and really surprised. When I came to Vietnam and witnessed the organization of the Organizing Committee, I felt very impressed and amazed, because everyone worked so hard and dedicated to create such a wonderful event.

This time, as a member of the Awards Council, I feel very happy and proud to be the one to review and evaluate many nominations. I must say that the nominations are truly excellent. Being able to contribute to selecting the award winners and meeting them directly, I feel extremely happy, happy for them too, because I was in the same position as them and know how that feels.

As a member of the Council, how do you evaluate this year's nominations?

The nominations this year are fantastic. The winners are also fantastic, and we'll know the results soon.

Although you cannot reveal the winners, can you give us an overall assessment of the quality of this year's nominations? Did the judges have a hard time debating because all the nominations were good?

This is really a challenge. We have three committees to screen, review, and then select the winners of this year's award. Sometimes we see a group of authors whose work is very impressive and very good, but we still need to check carefully to see if they are really suitable and fully meet the criteria of the award; whether those studies focus on solving fundamental scientific problems or not.

We think very carefully about who makes the fundamental discoveries and how the applications are developed, how many people are needed to move the basic science further and into practical applications. These are the criteria we aim for.

It can be seen that in the past four years and at least three years since you were honored with the VinFuture Prize, there have been many changes, especially when the winners have also been honored with other major prizes such as the Nobel Prize. In your current role as a member of the Prize Council, how do you feel?

Our Prize Committee selects winners based on the quality of their research and its impact, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. These criteria may overlap with those of the Nobel Prize Committee.

I think the Council members do not feel pressured by that, but the laureates do. As we know, last year there was a VinFuture laureate who later won the Nobel Prize. It is really nice to see the VinFuture laureates continue to receive other prizes.

During your time working with the VinFuture Prize and directly screening nominations, how do you evaluate scientists in Vietnam, especially the nominations in Vietnam participating in this prize?

Last year we received 1,500 nominations, and this year there are even more. We also strongly encourage our partners to nominate Vietnamese research projects.

Thank you very much, Professor!

Professor Pamela Christine Ronald is a researcher at the Institute for Innovative Genomics at the University of California, Berkeley, and co-author of the book "The Future's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food."
She was voted by Scientific American magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in the field of biotechnology.
In 2022, Prof. Ronald was awarded the Wolf Prize in Agriculture and the VinFuture Special Prize for Women Scientists.

Thu Huong

Source: https://daidoanket.vn/ai-se-la-chu-nhan-giai-thuong-vinfuture-2025.html