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2025 Award Winners

Our annual programme celebrates outstanding innovations that demonstrate scientific excellence, deliver measurable impact on today’s most urgent social and environmental challenges, and show strong potential for commercial implementation.

Awards Overview

In 2025, USD 100,000 in prizes was awarded to the teams behind the most promising solutions across five categories.

Chaired by Her Highness Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Chairperson of Dubai Culture & Arts Authority, and member of the Dubai Council, the jury for the 2025 Awards includes global industry leaders, innovators, and visionaries – whose insight, experience, and integrity guide our evaluation process.

Jury Members

**5 January 2026**
Meet previous winning teams and explore projects recognised for excellence, impact, and real-world potential. These initiatives demonstrate how academic research can translate into practical solutions addressing global challenges across sectors.

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Past Winners

The Prototypes for Humanity Award presented to Dr Maral Bayaraa has been formally added to the University of Oxford’s History of Science Museum collection, alongside some of the world’s most significant scientific innovations that tell stories of human ingenuity. 

 

The ceremony at the museum, during which Dr Bayaraa donated her award certificate to the museum’s archive, was attended by representatives from the 1851 Royal Commission, the University of Oxford, the Mongolian Embassy, the Dubai Future Foundation and Prototypes for Humanity. 

 

The award was presented to Dr Bayaraa during the 2023 edition of Prototypes for Humanity, recognising her innovation Digital Twins 4 Tailings Dams. The solution combines satellite Earth observation with AI-driven analysis to help monitor the stability of tailings storage facilities, strengthening early-warning capabilities, improving risk oversight, and supporting safe, more sustainable mining practices. 
 

For Prototypes for Humanity, the donation is more than symbolic. Museum accessioning now gives the award a permanent institutional home, preserving the story of a science-backed innovation designed to prevent environmental harm and protect communities. 

 

Dr Bayaraa, originally from Mongolia and now based in the UK, is a PhD researcher at the University of Oxford and a Senior Specialist in Earth Observation at the Satellite Applications Catapult. She initially planned to study the arts and philosophy before choosing geology, a pivot that ultimately led her to study the planet at scale from space.

Prototypes for Humanity award enters a world-class museum collection

Tailings storage facilities are essential to modern mining, but failures can be catastrophic, causing environmental damage, threatening waterways, and placing surrounding communities at risk. Dr Bayaraa’s approach uses satellite-based Earth observation and AI to monitor these facilities and detect indicators of instability earlier, supporting better decision-making, improved oversight, and more proactive risk management. 

Why this innovation matters 

**18 December 2025**

The Prototypes for Humanity Award presented to Dr Maral Bayaraa has been formally added to the University of Oxford’s History of Science Museum collection, alongside some of the world’s most significant scientific innovations that tell stories of human ingenuity.

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In 2025, Prototypes for Humanity brought together 115 distinguished international academics to help turn science-backed research into real-world outcomes through active collaboration with industry and public-sector stakeholders.

Designed to empower professors as catalysts of change, the forum enables high-level dialogue, networking, meetings and curated collaborations between academia, government, industry professionals, investors and venture experts.

2025: Empowering Academics to Drive Real-World Impact

The forum emphasised the vital role academics play in turning breakthrough research into real-world outcomes. Many promising ideas remain in academia because adoption is complex and depends on the right partners, validation environments, and implementation expertise. Connecting professors with decision-makers accelerates progress and creates pathways for scientific insight to translate into pilots, partnerships, and scalable impact.

Bridging research with real-world application 

Participating professors engaged in an intensive schedule designed to spark interdisciplinary collaboration and accelerate knowledge exchange, through:

- Workshops and dialogues with industry and venture experts
- Industry-led innovation sandpits, shaped around real-world challenges  and needs
- Interdisciplinary exchanges spanning sectors and scientific domains
- Peer-to-peer sessions supporting collaboration and insight-sharing
- Discussions focused on urgent challenges across health, climate, energy, and AI, reinforcing the emphasis on applied, high-impact research that can respond to real-world demands.
 

An Agenda Designed for Action

The breadth of research represented in the Forum was reflected in two days of short paper presentations, showcasing work across critical scientific and societal themes, alongside PechaKucha sessions, a fast-paced format for professors to present ideas, share knowledge and spark conversation.


Showcasing Global Research

# The 2025 Short Papers Platform, Best Paper Awards recognised outstanding academic contributions across seven categories. The winners were:

Awards and People’s Choice Winners 

The People’s Choice Awards were selected by attendees, recognising research that strongly resonated with the community. The winners were: 



Tadeu Baldani Caravieri, Director of Prototypes for Humanity, said: “Professors are central to shaping solutions to real-world problems, yet often groundbreaking research doesn’t reach where it is needed most. By uniting global academic excellence with Dubai’s future-driven ecosystem, we create structured pathways for research to accelerate into real-world impact. 


Leadership perspective 

**10 February 2026**

In 2025, Prototypes for Humanity brought together 115 distinguished international academics to help turn science-backed research into real-world outcomes through active collaboration with industry and public-sector stakeholders.

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Past Winners

Prototypes for Humanity award enters a world-class museum collection

2025: Empowering Academics to Drive Real-World Impact