Trieste Scienze Prize
Sharing knowledge: From north to south, and back
illycaffè is indebted to the southern hemisphere countries producing the finest Arabica coffee, the raw material in its single blend, and undertakes long-term projects with them to improve quality improvement and transfer know-how and technology.
For their part, countries in the southern hemisphere have outstanding scientists who do not always obtain the visibility and hence the resources for conducting research in their country.
The landmark for 700 scientists from developing countries is in Trieste, a city recognized globally as the “city of science”: the TWAS – the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World, supports the scientists’ research and offers opportunities for exchange, study and documentation.
illycaffè, TWAS, the Trieste City Council and the International Foundation for Scientific Progress and Freedom have instituted the Trieste Science Prize.
Each year, two prizes of $50,000 are awarded in rotation among the various fields of science:
2005 Biological sciences / Physics and astrophysics
2006 Mathematics / Medical sciences
2007 Chemical sciences / Agricultural sciences
2008 Earth, Space, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences / Engineering
Each prize is awarded by a jury of internationally renowned researchers chaired by the TWAS President. Jury members are not eligible for the award. Candidates must be nationals of developing countries, working and living in the Southern hemisphere who have achieved scientific results of outstanding international merit carried out at institutions in developing countries. Scientists who have received the Nobel Prize, the Tokyo/Kyoto Prize, the Crafoord Prize or the Abel Prize will not be eligible.
The winners of the first edition were the Brazilian biologist, Sergio Henrique Ferreira, who laid the foundation for the treatment of hypertension and the Indian physicist, T. V. Ramakrishnan, author of studies and breakthroughs in quantifying the conditions for the transformation of liquids into solids.
In 2006, the prize in the category of medical sciences was shared by biophysicist Chen Ding-Shinn, who played a leading role in uncovering the factors responsible for the transmission of the hepatitis B virus from mothers to infants and Chinese biologist Rao Zihe, for his contributions to structural biology and his studies of viruses responsible for human diseases. The prize in the category of mathematics was awarded to Brazilian mathematician Jacob Palis, for enhancing our understanding of population growth patterns, global climate change and even fluctuations in the stock market and to the Indian C.S. Seshadri, the creator of the Standard Monomial Theory.