The Frontiers Planet Prize announced today its 2025 national champions, offering an important international spotlight for research addressing our planetary crisis. The champions and their selected research papers provide new and scalable insights on topics from urban nature-based solutions to carbon capture to environmental justice and early-warning systems.
The winners will now go forward to a final round at the Villars Institute in June, where three of them will be chosen as international champions and receive $1 million to further their research. Each champion will present their research and engage with key planetary health figures across academia, policy, business, and non-governmental agencies, all of whom have the capability to shape policy and influence civil society.
Amongst the 19 national champions are two researchers connected with Future Earth. Argentina’s nominee, Dr. Rafael Pedro Fernandez, is based at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Science (ICB-CONICET) and a member of the Scientific Steering Committee for Future Earth’s Surface Ocean – Lower Atmosphere Study (SOLAS) network. Dr. Zia Mehrabi, the US nominee, is a member of Future Earth’s Global Land Programme and an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Fernandez is awarded for his work published in Nature that sheds light on the role of short-lived compounds in the atmosphere that contain halogens for their role in cooling the climate. The findings suggest that these gases should now be included in all Earth-system models. Most of the other authors on his paper are related to the SOLAS national network of Spain.
“Our results are crucial, not just for atmospheric chemistry but for Earth science as a whole,” says Fernandez. “They reveal a key connection between natural chemical, physical, and radiative processes that are essential for understanding Earth’s climate evolution.”
Mehrabi is awarded for his work published in the journal Science that found farms using a mix of strategies, like rotating crops, conserving water, and caring for soil, see better results for both nature and people. And the more strategies they combine, the bigger the benefits. It also noted how better policies and incentives are needed to help farmers adopt several diversification practices at once.
“We can imagine agriculture systems that are more diverse and serve people and nature at the same time,” says Mehrabi.
Launched by the Frontiers Research Foundation in 2022, the prize aims to elevate the most groundbreaking transformational research and bring it to an international stage. Nominations come from 23 national academies and more than 600 institutes across 62 countries. This year’s national winners span a wide range of disciplines and are chosen by a distinguished jury of 100 independent experts.
Future Earth supports the prize as a strategic partner, alongside the Potsdam Institute of Climate Research Impact, the International Science Council, the Villars Institute and others. SOLAS has been a core project of Future Earth since 2015.
To learn more about the prize, visit www.frontiersplanetprize.org.
