European Union’s Descartes Prize is open to all fields of scientific endeavour, including the social sciences. Since its creation, the Prize has attracted trans-national research projects of high calibre. Teams from all over Europe are leading research projects of not only European but global importance, in key scientific domains. Life Sciences, Chemistry, Physics and Engineering are particularly well represented among the projects to be considered for this year’s prize.
The Descartes Prize for Research, which exists since 2000, was complemented with a new Descartes Prize for Science Communication in 2004. By means of this new prize, the European Commission intends to stimulate interest and careers in science communication and to improve the quality of science communication with the public. This prize is attributed the evaluation by independent experts following a call for proposals.
In its Science Communication part, it targets organisations or individuals having achieved outstanding results in science communication and having been selected as winners by European and/or national organisations which carry out existing science communication prizes of any kind.
This year one of the laureates, Colin Pillinger, got a 5000 euros prize for his work in raising public awareness of space research.
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