Published: 02 September 2024
Text: Anne-Marie Korseberg Stokke
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One of this year's Kavli Prize winners is Robert Langer, one of the founders of the pharmaceutical giant Moderna.
When Robert S. Langer finished his chemical engineering degree in 1974, he received lucrative job offers from several oil companies. However, he chose a different path and used his engineering expertise to revolutionize medical research. He was the first to develop nanomaterials that enabled medicine to gradually release active ingredients in the body.
He had a key role in developing the mRNA vaccine and in the founding of Moderna – the company behind one of the most widely used COVID vaccines.
Langer receives the 2024 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience along with Armand Paul Alivisatos and Chad A. Mirkin. They have also contributed with important research on nanoparticles for medical use, in particular for diagnostic purposes.
The citation states that they "have revolutionized the field of nanomedicine by demonstrating how nanotechnology can advance biomedical research and practice."
As part of the Kavli Prize Week program, they gave lectures about their research at Oslo Science Park.
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The Kavli Prize is a collaboration between The Kavli Foundation in the USA, the Ministry of Education and Science and the Norwegian Academy of Sciences
The Kavli prize was founded by physicist, civil engineer and entrepreneur Fred Kavli (1927–2013)
The award honors researchers for breakthroughs in astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience that have changed our understanding of the big, the small and the complex
Three prizes of one million dollars are awarded every two years in each of the three fields
The Kavli Prize in Astrophysics:
David Charbonneau (Canada/USA), Harvard University
Sara Seager (Canada/USA), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
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The Kavli Prize in Nanoscience:
Armand Paul Alivisatos (USA), University of Chicago
Robert Langer (USA), Koch Institute of Integrative Cancer Research, MIT
Chad Mirkin (USA), Northwestern University
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The Kavli Prize in Neuroscience:
Winrich Freiwald (Tyskland/USA), The Rockefeller University
Nancy Kanwisher (USA), Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Doris Ying Tsao (USA), The University of California, Berkeley
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Behind partially closed doors on the ground floor of Oslo Science Park, you'll find a maze of copper pipes, flasks, test tubes, nozzles, meters, and hoses. Here, researchers from the University of Oslo's Centre for Materials Science and Nanotechnology (SMN) work. Among other things, they are trying to find solutions to our need for sustainable energy.
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