FAQs

We require personal information about the nominator(s) and nominee(s), a description and evaluation of the research being nominated, and at least one (01) letter of endorsement. Additional optional documents may include, but are not limited to: the nominee’s curriculum vitae, a list of relevant publications, patents and intellectual property, products, and a list of former awards/recognitions. All of these requirements and detailed instructions can be found in our online portal.

You can access the nomination form on our online portal. We recommend that you download the most recent version and work on it offline, as each question has a word count limit, and there may be some updated questions that require more time to work on. The evaluation criteria are available on our official website for your review. Nonetheless, we shall emphasize that the nomination’s most critical components are the significance of the nominated technologies/innovations and their impact.

In the nomination form, we allow up to 10 spots to upload the files for the supporting documents. It does not mean that nominators will have to upload all 10 files. You can leave them blank if you do not have any other additional documents to upload.
The letter of support should come from the nominator. And the letters of endorsement would come from up to three endorsers who know the nominee’s work very well.
There is core information that we do require such as the discovery/invention and the impact. At the same time, there is additional information, which will be helpful to us. We would not want to discourage a nominator from submitting a nomination due to the challenge of finding endorsers. If we can have more information from the endorsement, that will be helpful, but it is not essential.
You should select the country where the nominee currently lives and works if you are not sure of their nationality or if they have dual citizenship.
If you want to nominate someone for the Special Prize for Innovators from Developing Countries then both the research and the scientist who conducts the research must be from a developing country. If you want to nominate a candidate for the Grand Prize or other Special Prizes, where s/he comes from will not matter.
Yes, it is if the research breakthrough was carried out in the developing country.

If two people working in the same field are nominated for a discovery or breakthrough, that will be counted as one nomination. That nomination will have two nominees.

It would be very helpful for us if we have a fuller context of the trajectory from early inspiration and discovery through to maybe completely critical and innovative implementation phases. We encourage you as a nominator to provide us as much information as possible.
The VinFuture Foundation keeps the information about the nominations confidential. While we leave it to the nominators to decide, we encourage the nominators to keep their nominations confidential as well. We do not have a specific requirement or control from our side. Therefore, it is at the nominators’ discretion to contact the nominees to ask for their consent.
While having a granted patent or patentable research is appealing, it is not a requirement for nomination and shall not give a competitive advantage over other nominations. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend nominators include any novel patents as supporting documents if there are any.
VinFuture is an annual prize. If you cannot make it to this year’s deadline, then the nominations submitted after the deadline this year will be considered for the VinFuture Prize of the following year.
We will keep it for three years. However, we may reach out to the nominator to see if he/she would like to update the nomination or provide additional information.
You can nominate the same person, but you should update the nomination documents for this year’s Prize following the published guidelines.
You may include as many innovations and technologies in a single nomination as you see fit. Please keep in mind that the number of qualified innovations or technologies will not be a determining factor in the evaluation process, as we place a much stronger emphasis on the nomination’s impact and potential to change people’s lives.
Yes, and such nominations are strongly encouraged as long as they have the potential to make a significant positive change and improvements for the global community. Excellent nominations are most often incredibly impactful. Our Pre-Screening Committee and Council members are adept at evaluating nominations that fall outside their areas of expertise. Furthermore, we do seek opinion from outside experts.

No. It is entirely up to you whether to nominate in this year’s round. We strongly advise you to begin the process soon, even if you are missing some mandatory information. Our team is available to assist you throughout the process. And we will notify you if additional information is required.

Each nominator is eligible to submit more than one nomination for each of the four prize categories for a prize season. Ensure to include all key contributors who, in your opinion, qualify as co-winners in the proposed category.
It depends on your familiarity with the nominated research: the more familiar you are, the less time is necessary. There are mandatory and optional information sections on the nomination form; completing just the mandatory fields should not take a considerable amount of time. We encourage that you complete the nomination form even if you lack sufficient information at the time, as our team is happy to follow up later if extra information is required.
You may submit any documents, files, or media that you believe would strengthen your nomination, and there are no limitations on the number of supporting materials you may include. Additional supporting materials are valuable for our Prize Council and Pre-Screening Committee in the decision-making process.

Our online nomination form is simple and convenient to use. The system automatically saves your work as you work through it and keeps track of the word count. If you prefer to work on the nomination form offline, a soft copy is available for download at

  • Nomination Form: https://vinuni.my.salesforce.com/sfc/p/#2v000001XwGF/a/2u0000008xtk/mKZNm8WczonjEChNbfEeZ2Usw73D563YxF9kLFtIhlU
  • Endorsement letter: https://vinuni.my.salesforce.com/sfc/p/#2v000001XwGF/a/2u0000008xtf/0UAM7YC4avvcGgR8leK2G6E9yky_0bZNyyLXNN8O3U8
  • An additional form of nominees: https://vinuni.my.salesforce.com/sfc/p/#2v000001XwGF/a/2u0000008xtW/rLKrX2obp0ViQTY2O.fivhUXWjNIbXAY5hol0rKsueQ


We can also send the form to you by email; just notify us at secretariat@vinfutureprize.org.

Yes, in part. As you can see, our Prize Council and Pre-Screening Committee are composed of people from different backgrounds and disciplines. As such, we also look for respectable endorsers who are either active science supporters or scientists themselves. Even for endorsers who are distinguished scientists, we require a clear and credible explanation of either proven impacts or a description of potential impact.