Carlos Torres Vila defended the power of knowledge as “the best instrument we have to understand the world” and to face “major disruptions” such as the global environmental crisis, during the award ceremony of the 15th BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Humanities and Social Sciences has been presented to Steven Pinker (Harvard University) and Peter Singer (Princeton University) for bringing vital questions to the mainstream of public debate: the role of rationality, scientific knowledge, and humanistic values, and the moral status of animals. Their work has had a significant influence in shaping the cultural and legal framework of today.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economics, Finance and Management has gone in this fifteenth edition to Timothy J. Besley (London School of Economics), Torsten Persson (Institute of International Economic Studies, Stockholm University) and Guido Tabellini (Bocconi University,) for “illuminating the connections between the economic and political worlds” and “transforming the field of political economy,” in the words of the committee’s citation.

Laser light tools developed by Anne L’Huillier, Paul Corkum, and Ferenc Krausz have led to a new field of research with applications in areas such as electronics, the diagnosis of illnesses, the development of new materials and the search for clean energy sources.

Alberto Sangiovanni Vincentelli, a Professor at the University of California in Berkeley, was presented the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Information and Communication Technologies for “radically transforming” the design of chips that power today’s electronic devices, leading to “the modern semiconductor industry.”

The three award-winning scientists “have expanded knowledge of the evolutionary importance of behavior as a driver of animal survival, reproduction and adaptation,” and have demonstrated the need to incorporate social interactions into species conservation plans, according to the committee of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Ecology and Conservation Biology category.

The BBVA Foundation awarded the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biomedicine in this fifteenth edition to David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper “for their contributions to the use of artificial intelligence for the accurate prediction of the three-dimensional structure of proteins.” In the words of the committee, the winners achieved an advance with huge biomedical potential for the development of new treatments against multiple conditions.

Paleoclimatologists James Zachos (University of California at Santa Cruz, USA) and Ellen Thomas (Yale University and Wesleyan University, USA) identified an anomalous episode  in the planet’s history in which massive emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere occurred, causing a global temperature rise of between 5 and 6 ºC and a massive extinction of species in the deep ocean, which has provided “a very valuable analogy of anthropogenic climate change”, according to the jury of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Climate Change.

Carlos Torres Vila emphasized the power of research, innovation and education to tackle the great challenges facing humanity, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the environmental deterioration, during his speech at the 14th BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards ceremony.

The BBVA Foundation presented the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Social Sciences to Mark Granovetter, “the most eminent economic sociologist in the world,” for revealing the power of “loose social ties” among individuals for people's economic and social performance.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Music and Opera has gone in this fourteenth edition to Philip Glass “for his extraordinary contribution to musical creation and opera, with a major impact in the music history of the 20th and 21st centuries,” in the words of the award committee.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economics, Finance and Management has gone in this fourteenth edition to Matthew O. Jackson “for his pioneering work on illuminating the role of networks in economic and social life.”  His work can be applied to the study of the labor market, inequality and even the management of crises such as the one caused by COVID-19 or Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The fourteenth BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences recognized the contributions of Charles Fefferman and Jean-François Le Gall to mathematical analysis and probability theory, two domains that have applications in multiple fields, from the behavior of fluids to quantum mechanics and the properties of graphene.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Information and Communication Technologies has gone in this fourteenth edition to Judea Pearl for “bringing a modern foundation to artificial intelligence”. The Professor of Computer Science at the University of California (UCLA), has made contributions that enable AI programs to use two of the key resources we humans use to interpret the world and arrive at decisions: probability and causality.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Ecology and Conservation Biology has gone in this fourteenth edition to the ecologists Lenore Fahrig, Simon Levin and Steward Pickett for incorporating the spatial dimension into ecosystem research.The three award winners have made fundamental contributions both to the development of the theory and mathematics of spatial ecology, and to its application to the design of nature reserve areas, wildlife management plans, as well as road networks and sustainable cities, according to the jury.

The jury of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biology and Biomedicine has selected Katalin Karikó, Robert Langer and Drew Weissman for their contributions to messenger RNA therapeutics and the technology that enables our own cells to produce proteins for the prevention and treatment of disease. The first clinical application of their work was the development of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2.

Gerald Holton, who was unable to attend the awards ceremony in person, received the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Humanities and Social Sciences from the President of the BBVA Foundation, Carlos Torres Vila, at his home in Cambridge (Massachusetts). "This award recognizes Holton's great contribution to the understanding of the cultural dimension of science," said Torres Vila.

In 2021, three of the six Nobel Prizes - in Economic Sciences, Medicine and Physics - were presented to researchers who had previously received a Frontiers of Knowledge Award. These awards, which the BBVA Foundation has presented for the past 13 years, have established themselves as a prelude to the Nobel Prize. This is due to the ability of Frontiers of Knowledge juries to preempt the Swedish Academy. The Frontiers of Knowledge Awards have recognized 20 individuals who months or years later went on to receive a Nobel Prize.

The ceremony of the 12th and 13th editions of the Frontiers of Knowledge Awards, which took place on September 21 at the Euskalduna Palace in Bilbao, highlighted the value of science and culture in tackling the great global challenges facing humanity beyond the pandemic, such as the environmental emergency, the profound technological transformation and the risk of new economic crises. The event recognized 35 world leaders in scientific research and artistic creation.

The BBVA Foundation has awarded the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Economics, Finance and Business Management category to Ben Bernanke, Mark Gertler, Nobuhiro Kiyotaki and John Moore for their fundamental contributions to our understanding of how financial imperfections can amplify macroeconomic fluctuations and generate deep macroeconomic recessions. Their first works focused on a fundamental aspect that had not been addressed until then: the state of companies' balance sheets and its effect on their borrowing capacity and, therefore, their investment capacity.

The BBVA Foundation has awarded the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Basic Sciences category to Paul Alivisatos and Michael Grätzel for their fundamental contributions to the development of new nanomaterials that are already being applied both in solar energy production and in next-generation electronics. The work of both winners opens the door to new avenues for the production of renewable energies, electronic devices, biomedical imaging techniques, and other applications.

The BBVA Foundation has awarded the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Information and Communication Technologies to John Hennessy and David Patterson, founders of the new scientific area known as computer architecture, that designs the “brains” of computer systems. The awardees were the first to devise a conceptual framework that provides the field with a grounded approach to measuring performance, energy efficiency and the complexity of a computer.

The BBVA Foundation has recognized the work of Sandra Díaz, Sandra Lavorel, and Mark Westoby with the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Ecology and Conservation Biology category has gone in this thirteenth edition to ecologists. The three researchers linked plant ecosystem function to their physical characteristics, and described how these broad traits relate together at global level.

The BBVA Foundation has recognized researchers David Julius and Arden Parapoutian with its the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biology and Biomedicine for their work to discover the receptors that mediate the touch sensations of temperature and pressure. A groundbreaking study that opened up new therapeutic avenues to reduce acute and chronic pain associated with trauma and a range of diseases.

The BBVA Foundation distinguishes Neil Adger, Ian Burton and Karen O’Brien with a with a Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Climate Change category for the contributions of their studies on social adaptation to climate change. This social perspective transforms a paradigm of research and action that was previously limited to the curbing of greenhouse gas emissions

The BBVA Foundation has awarded Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the category of Social Sciences for her pioneering insights, which have elucidated the role of cognitive shortcuts in shaping social interactions. The American social psychologists, two of the most influential working today, have been instrumental for understanding how these shortcuts in mental processing intervene in the formation of value judgments about other people or social situations.

BBVA Foundation recognizes the Estonian composer with the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Category of Music and Opera for cultivating an original language, which has led to the creation of a unique sound world. In its citation, the jury underscores that Arvo Pärt’s creations are “a fresh approach to spiritual music, especially in his choral oeuvre, that reduces the musical material to the essence.”

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economics, Finance and Management has gone in this twelfth edition to Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt for their fundamental contributions to the study of innovation, technical change, and competition policy. The joint research of these two economists builds on Joseph Schumpeter’s idea that productivity growth at the macroeconomic level stems from a process of creative destruction in which the continuous entry of new firms and technologies renders the incumbents obsolete.

The BBVA Foundation has honored Charles Bennett, Gilles Brassard, and Peter Shor with the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences for their respective roles in the development of quantum computing and cryptography.

The BBVA Foundation has awarded Isabelle Guyon, Bernhard Schölkopf and Vladimir Vapnik with the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Information and Communication Technologies category, for helping advance the field of artificial intelligence with their seminal contributions to machine learning. Their work has been applied to fields as diverse as medical diagnosis, computer vision, natural language processing and the monitoring of climate change.