VinFuture Prize Council

Professor Pamela Christine Ronald graduated from UC Berkeley with a Ph.D. in Molecular and Physiological Plant Biology. She was a M.S. student at Stanford University, a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University and joined the faculty of UC Davis in 1992.

She also serves as Investigator, Innovative Genomics Institute at UC Berkeley and is coauthor of Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, genetics and the Future of Food.

She was named one of the world’s 100 most influential people in biotechnology by Scientific American. In 2022, Ronald was awarded the Wolf Prize in Agriculture & the VinFuture Special Prize for Female Innovators.

She is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences & the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Professor Susan Solomon currently serves as the Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Studies and Chair of the Program in Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA.

Previously, she assumed the role of Ellen Swallow Richards Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry & Climate Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Acting Director at the Atmospheric Chemistry Division of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and Senior Scientist and Research Chemist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

She is internationally recognized for her outstanding contributions to the elucidation of Antarctic ozone “hole” and to our understanding of the intricate interaction between atmospheric chemistry and climate change.

With an illustrious career, she received many awards, including the National Medal of Science in 1999, Volvo Environmental Prize 2009, Crafoord Prize of the Swedish Academy of Sciences In 2018, and VinFuture Special Prize for Female Innovators 2023.

Martin Green is Scientia Professor at the University of New South Wales, Sydney and Founding Director of the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics, involving several other Australian Universities and research groups.

His group’s contributions to photovoltaics are well known and include holding the record for silicon solar cell efficiency for 30 of the last 40 years, described as one of the “Top Ten” Milestones in the history of solar photovoltaics.

The PERC solar cell that he invented in 1983 and his team developed to its full potential accounted for 91.2% of worldwide silicon solar module production in 2021 (CPIA).

Major international awards include the 1999 Australia Prize, the 2002 Right Livelihood Award, also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize, the 2007 SolarWorld Einstein Award, the 2016 Ian Wark Medal from the Australian Academy of Science, the Global Energy Prize in 2018, the prestigious 2021 Japan Prize, the 2022 Millenium Technology Prize, the 2023 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, the 2023 VinFuture Grand Prize.

Professor Leslie Gabriel Valiant is a British-American computer scientist and computational theorist who is currently the T. Jefferson Coolidge Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at Harvard University.

Professor Valiant is well-known for his work in theoretical computer science. He was awarded the A.M. Turing Award in 2010 for work in machine learning, computational complexity and parallel computation, having been described by the ACM as a heroic figure in theoretical computer science and a role model for his courage and creativity in addressing some of the deepest unsolved problems in science.

Professor Valiant also received the Nevanlinna Prize from the International Mathematical Union in 1986, the Knuth Prize in 1997, and the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science Award in 2008. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1991, and a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences in 2001.

Professor Valiant was educated at King’s College, University of Cambridge, followed by Imperial College London, and finally at the University of Warwick, where he received his Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1974. He started teaching at Harvard University in 1982, prior to which he taught at Carnegie Mellon University, Leeds University, and the University of Edinburgh.

Professor Sir Konstantin ‘Kostya’ Novoselov FRS was born in Russia in August 1974 and has dual British and Russian citizenship. He is best known for isolating graphene at The University of Manchester in 2004 and is an expert in condensed matter physics, mesoscopic physics, and nanotechnology.

Every year since 2014, Professor Novoselov has been included in the list of the most highly cited researchers in the world. Kostya holds the position of Tan Chin Tuan Centennial Professor at the National University of Singapore. He is also the part-time Langworthy Professor of Physics and the Royal Society Research Professor at The University of Manchester. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2010 for his achievements with graphene.

He was awarded with numerous prizes, including Nicholas Kurti Prize (2007), International Union of Pure and Applied Science Prize (2008), MIT Technology Review young innovator (2008), Europhysics Prize (2008), Bragg Lecture Prize from the Union of Crystallography (2011), the Kohn Award Lecture (2012), Leverhulme Medal from the Royal Society (2013), Onsager medal (2014), Carbon medal (2016), Dalton medal (2016), and Otto Warburg Prize (2019) among many others. He was knighted in the 2012 New Year Honours. He graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and undertook his PhD studies at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands before moving to The University of Manchester in 2001. Later Professor Novoselov joined the National University of Singapore in 2019.

Professor Novoselov has published more than 400 peer-reviewed research papers.

Professor Daniel Kammen serves as James and Katherine Lau Distinguished Professor of Sustainability at the University of California, Berkeley (USA) with parallel appointments in the Energy and Resources, the Goldman School of Public Policy, and the Department of Nuclear Engineering.

He was appointed the first Environment and Climate Partnership for the Americas (ECPA) Fellow by Secretary of State Hilary R. Clinton in April 2010. Professor Kammen is currently on leave from the University of California while serving in the Biden Administration as the Senior Advisor for Energy Innovation at the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

He is a Permanent Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. In the United States, he serves on two National Academy of Sciences boards and panels.

Doctor Xuedong Huang is a leading computer scientist and technology executive in AI and Spoken Language Processing. He is currently the Chief Technology Officer at Zoom Video Communications (USA). Previously, he was a Microsoft Technical Fellow and Chief Technology Officer overseeing Microsoft Azure AI engineering and research, covering Microsoft’s core perceptive and cognitive AI pillars (Speech, Computer Vision, Natural Language, and Decision).

Dr. Huang has co-authored over 170 US patents, two books, and over 100 papers, including a historical speech recognition review with Raj Reddy and James K. Baker for Communications of the ACM reflecting several generations of spoken language R&D. His notable achievements include receiving the Allen Newell research excellence medal in 1992, and IEEE Speech Processing Best Paper in 1993. In 2016, Wired Magazine named him as one of “25 Geniuses Who Are Creating the Future of Business”.

He was recognized as an IEEE Fellow in 2000, and ACM Fellow in 2017 for his contributions to spoken language processing.

Dr. Huang was on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University from 1989 to 1993. He received his Ph.D., MS, and BS from the University of Edinburgh, Tsinghua University, and Hunan University respectively.

Professor Văn-Chí Đặng received his BS in Chemistry (highest honors) from the University of Michigan and was awarded a Ph.D. in Chemistry (high distinction) from Georgetown University.

He received his MD (inducted to Alpha Omega Alpha and Phi Beta Kappa) and internal medicine residency training at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He trained in hematology-oncology at UCSF, where he did postdoctoral work on the MYC oncogene. Professor Đặng then returned to Johns Hopkins in 1987 where he established the first mechanistic link between a cancer gene (MYC) and cellular energy metabolism, contributing to the concept that genetic alterations in cancers re-program fuel utilization by tumors and render cancers addicted to certain fuel sources. This conceptual framework contributes to strategies for therapeutic targeting of cancer cell metabolism. His current work extends the role of MYC in cancer metabolism and the role of the circadian clock in metabolism and cancer.

He was Director of the Division of Hematology at Johns Hopkins Hospital (1993-2003) and was appointed Johns Hopkins Family Professor in Oncology Research and Vice Dean for Research at Johns Hopkins. In 2011, he became director of the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania, and on July 1, 2017, he assumed the position of Scientific Director of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, overseeing Ludwig branches located in the United States, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and fellow of the American Association for Cancer Research Academy. He serves as Editor-in-Chief of Cancer Research, an AACR journal.

Professor Pascale Cossart is a pioneering cellular microbiologist who has made significant contributions to our understanding of how bacteria both infect, and survive within, host cells. She uses the food-borne pathogen Listeria monocytogenes as a model, with her research paving the way for future therapeutics.

She is currently a Professor and Head of the Unité des Interactions Bactéries Cellules at the Pasteur Institute. She was also a Professor of Biochemistry at the Royal School of Medicine in Vientiane, Laos from 1974 – 1975 before working at Pasteur Institute in Paris from 1988 until the present.

Professor Cossart’s research provides a detailed picture of the factors which make Listeria such an effective infectious agent. She identified different proteins that Listeria uses to enter cells, move, and disseminate in tissues. Through the creation of a transgenic mouse model, she paved the way for in vivo studies. Professor Cossart has also unveiled new regulatory mechanisms in bacteria and is now deciphering how bacteria induce epigenetic changes during infection.

Professor Cossart has received several prestigious awards and recognitions, not only for her research but also for her role as a mentor and promoter of interdisciplinary collaboration. These awards include the Robert Koch Prize for biomedical science in 2007 in Germany, the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine in 2008 in Switzerland, the Balzan Prize in 2013 in Italy, the 2014 FEBS | EMBO Women in Science Award, and most recently, the FEMS-Lwoff Award in 2019 in the UK. She became the Honorary Doctor of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden in 2020.

Professor Sir Richard Henry Friend, FRS holds the Cavendish Professorship of Physics at the University of Cambridge. He is Director of the Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability and of the Maxwell Centre. He is also a Tan Chin Tuan Centennial Professor at the National University of Singapore and serves as Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Singapore. In addition, he is one of the principal investigators in the new Cambridge-based Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration (IRC) on nanotechnology and co-founder of Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) and Plastic Logic.

Owning more than 140 patents and having written or co-authored over 1,100 prestigious scientific publications worldwide, Professor Sir Richard Henry Friend, FRS is one of the most influential physicists in the world. He also serves as a Council member of many prestigious global Prizes.

He and his group have developed polymer-processing techniques for conjugated polymers and demonstrated non-linear electronic excitations through electrical and optical measurements. He is credited for the first construction of MOSFET (Metal Insulator Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor) with polyacetylene as the active semiconductor; the demonstration of novel mechanisms of operation with novel behavior; and the first construction of the efficient, large-area, polymeric semiconductor LED’s (Light Emitting Diodes), based on polyphenylene-vinylene. His research on OLED has been used to develop flat screens, scroll screens, and motion screens for the future with the most well-known application of his research being the OLED TV. His work has also been applied to develop polymer field-effect transistors, light-emitting diodes, photoelectric diodes, optical pump-proof tubes, and direct-printed polymer transistors.

With a world-renowned reputation and numerous achievements in both research and teaching, Professor Sir Richard Henry Friend, FRS was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) in 2002. His notable honors and awards include the IEE’s Faraday Medal in 2003, the Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 2006, the Institute of Physics Katharine Burr Blodgett Medal, Prize with Dr. David Ffye in 2009, and the Millennium Technology Prize for the development of plastic electronics in 2010. He was knighted for “Services to Physics” in the 2003 Queen’s Birthday Honours List.