It is with great pride that I announce the new National Academy of Sciences Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences. With support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research established this prize to recognize the extraordinary research accomplishments of mid-career food and agricultural scientists.
We are living in an age where the pace of science is accelerating like never before and we have a great opportunity to see the results of research rapidly put into action. Probably no other field is experiencing this more than agriculture. Our food and agricultural scientists are pursuing basic and translational research that is cutting edge and yielding results that rarely even see the shelf. Our new transformational genetic technologies have immediate application to breeding, our data are not only big but enormous in size and value to our enterprise; we are ever expanding use of new technologies such as imaging to support farmers in knowing more about what is happening on their field. Our entire research enterprise is about taking innovation to the field: we see a problem, we determine the knowledge necessary to solve it and we extend that knowledge almost immediately.
The confluence of technological advances and intractable agriculture and food issues means scientists working in agriculture and food will be leading edge when it comes to the next great breakthroughs. Let’s give them the recognition they deserve in what they already have done and for what lies ahead. What better way to distinguish them than to bestow a prize from the National Academy of Sciences, our premier organization recognizing scientific scholarship and accomplishment? These honored individuals and/or teams will join the ranks of Borlaug and Carver and even Pasteur and Mendel, who found that studying plants, animals and microbes is not only scientifically rewarding but can also change our lives and our world.
—Dr. Sally Rockey, Executive Director
Nominations for the National Academy of Sciences Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences Established by the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research are open through October 3, 2016. Learn more.