The Frontiers of Knowledge Awards celebrate the transformative, unifying power of science and the arts

“Geopolitical tensions, environmental challenges, social polarization, and the spread of disinformation are transforming our societies,” Torres Vila continued. “In the face of this reality, the values we celebrate today are more necessary than ever. We celebrate curiosity over conformity. Rigor over simplification. Evidence over prejudice. Cooperation over fragmentation. And creativity as a force capable of unlocking new opportunities for the future. The laureates of this 18th edition remind us of something essential: that progress is not born from pre-existing certainty. It is born from curiosity, from the willingness to explore the unknown, to question what we think we know, and to persevere in the search for answers.”

Co-chaired by the BBVA Foundation President and the President of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Eloísa del Pino, the ceremony featured a welcome address by the Mayor of Bilbao, Juan Mari Aburto, and a closing speech from the President of the Basque Government, Lehendakari Imanol Pradales.

The CSIC President hailed curiosity as “the lifeblood of science” – a quality celebrated by these BBVA Foundation awards – and spoke of “the need to protect the freedom to be curious” in the face of such present-day threats as “a culture of immediacy that prioritizes quick answers over painstaking research,” along with “the risk to our thinking skills” posed by  artificial intelligence, “if we do not educate ourselves in its use.” She also expressed her concern about “the instances of censorship and financial strangulation of science we have been seeing in recent years, even in the West.”

Lehendakari Imanol Pradales congratulated the twelve awardees on their “outstanding contribution to the progress of humanity.” Thanks to their work, he observed, it is now possible to have a more cohesive world better equipped to face the challenges of the future. Work, furthermore, that connects with the pillars on which Basque society is founded. “For us, the Basque people, science, philosophy and the arts are pillars of humanism and of a model of society that puts people at the center.”

The ceremony also welcomed a sizable representation of the international committees deciding the eight award categories, which draw their members from some of the top universities in Europe and North America. Among the more than 1,000 people in attendance were eminent researchers, artists, university professors, science policy leaders and representatives of scientific societies, along with leading figures from the worlds of business and the media.

The “wicked trick” that transforms the behavior of new materials

“Fundamental research is like hiking in the mountains,” said Allan MacDonald, who shares the Basic Sciences award with Pablo Jarillo-Herrero. “You climb one ridge because you are curious what can be seen from the top. Only later do you realize that the view has revealed a valley, a river, and possibly a road no one knew existed.” For the Professor of Physics at the University of Texas at Austin, that is precisely the reason awards like the BBVA Foundation’s are so important, because “they affirm the value of basic questions, even when the practical destination is not yet visible.”

MacDonald and Jarillo are the pioneers who led both the theoretical foundation and experimental verification of a new field, known as twistronics, which allows to transform and control the behavior of new materials. In 2011, MacDonald predicted in a theoretical model that by rotating two layers of graphene at a given angle – in the region of one degree – the interaction between electrons would give rise to emergent properties. Seven years later, Pablo Jarillo-Herrero – Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – led the experimental demonstration of the effect of this “magic angle”. Rotating two layers of graphene, he found, transformed their behavior, producing new properties like superconductivity.

“For centuries,” explained MacDonald, “materials discovery has meant searching the natural world, synthesizing compounds, and hoping to find useful properties. That work remains essential. The discovery of materials consisted mainly of exploring the natural world and synthesizing compounds, in the hope of finding useful properties.” Now, however, thanks to the “wicked new trick” of the magic angle, “we can design the quantum behavior of new materials by stacking, twisting and tuning layers that are only atoms thick.”

“In the Middle Ages,” noted Jarillo-Herrero, “alchemists searched for the philosopher’s stone, which would turn everything it touched into gold. Magic-angle graphene is a little like that, but in reverse: we take a single material and make it behave like many others.”

The Spanish physicist too hailed the importance of the basic research recognized by the award: “Basic science rarely has immediate applications, but history shows that deep knowledge, and the paradigm shifts it drives, can lead to transformative technological revolutions, with significant social and economic consequences. When physicists discovered the laser, no one thought it would become the basis of optical communications or be used for cataract surgery. When physicists invented atomic clocks, no one imagined they would become crucial for GPS navigation. Curiosity-driven research bears fruit in the long term, and we need society, politicians, philanthropists and the private sector to support it.”

The algorithm that safeguards security and privacy in the 21st-century digital society

For 25 years, the algorithm devised by Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen – named Rijndael, a portmanteau of their two surnames – has served as the robust shield that safeguards the privacy and security of our digital society. In 1997, the laureates in the Information and Communication Technologies category created the cryptographic system that, just a few years later – in 2001 in the U.S. and 2005 internationally – would become the de facto standard used to protect electronic devices and digital connections worldwide against the ever-present threat of hacking.

“Today, it is used to secure websites, electronic payments, computer disks, mobile phones, smart homes and many other systems present in our daily life,” said Daemen, Professor of Symmetric Cryptography at Radboud University (Nijmegen, The Netherlands).

Rijmen, his co-laureate, Professor of Applied Cryptology at KU Leuven (Belgium), explained that cryptography “was for millennia a guarded art, reserved for rulers, militaries and diplomats. Open academic inquiry into cryptographic ideas was discouraged or even actively obstructed.” But the advent of the internet meant this landscape changed out of all recognition: “Online payments, e-government services, and, later, social media made secure communication indispensable.”

In such open environments, Rijmen observed, “security cannot rely on trade secrets. Its only sustainable foundation is cryptology.” In response, the digital society of the 21st century “has fostered a vibrant culture of open research in cryptology and cybersecurity,” in which progress arises from “a disciplined process of trial and error within the academic community, whereby ciphers are proposed, analyzed, broken, repaired, and broken again. Each attack yields new insights and design principles, leading to increasingly robust cryptographic systems.”

The two laureates began working on cryptography in the 1990s and devoted their PhD theses to designing new algorithms. At that time, as Daemen recalled, “the cryptographic community was still a long way from having solid ciphers.” After 20 years of use, the Data Encryption Standard (DES), promoted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) – the agency that regulates cybersecurity in the United States – was becoming too insecure to do its job. NIST organized a competition to find a more effective algorithm, in which Rijndael emerged victorious, taking its place as the new Advanced Encryption Standard (AES).

For Daemen, the invention of Rinjdael “was a crucial step forward in the cryptologic process. In the 25 years since the NIST standardized it as the AES, no practical attacks have been published, and over the years it has become the most widely trusted encryption standard in the world. We see this as a triumph of open research. It is open research, rigorous testing, and public support that keep our digital lives safe.”

The “living drugs” that have revolutionized cancer treatment

“A profound shift in how humanity fights disease: the birth of cellular medicine.” This is how Carl June, co-laureate with Michel Sadelain in the Biology and Biomedicine category, defined the cancer treatment revolution led by the CAR-T cell immunotherapies that the two researchers discovered and developed. These “living drugs,” as Sadelain terms them, are cells extracted from the patient themselves and genetically engineered in the laboratory so they can identify, locate and destroy tumors with extraordinary precision.

“For over a century, the tools of oncology were surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy,” observed June, Richard W. Vague Professor of Immunotherapy at the University of Pennsylvania. “While effective, they are often blunt instruments. Our approach sought to utilize a far more sophisticated weapon already residing within us: the human immune system.”

It was four decades ago that Sadelain – Herbert and Florence Irving Professor of Medicine at Columbia University – began to imagine “how we could teach important cells of our immune system named T cells to perform any task of our choosing, such as destroying cancer cells.” This meant establishing the technology for introducing genes into patients’ T cells and designing composite receptors that would guide these to execute their assigned mission, but by 2003 Sadelain was able to demonstrate for the first time “that we could effectively treat a range of leukemias and lymphomas in mice using genetically engineered human T cells.”

June recalled how six years after this experimental success in an animal model, the first clinical trials he led in 2009 with patients suffering from advanced leukemia exceeded all his expectations: “Patients who had run out of options entered complete, lasting remissions. Today, tens of thousands of individuals worldwide, including many children, have been saved by this technology.”

He also drew attention to “the remarkable role that Spain has played in the global rollout of this technology.” Through “inspiring academic collaborations with institutions like the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona,” Spanish scientists, he said, “have pioneered affordable, public-sector access to CAR-T therapies, setting an international example for translational medicine worldwide.”

Sadelain, for his part, spoke of how the range of potential applications for this therapeutic strategy “is growing rapidly beyond blood cancers,” not only to address “the challenge of solid tumors,” but also to combat other diseases. “CAR T cells are showing great promise in rheumatology, neurology and overcoming transplantation barriers. They may also be harnessed for intractable infections, neurodegenerative disorders and pathologies associated with senescence and fibrosis. The advent of CD19 CAR T cells paves the way for many more discoveries and applications yet to come.”

Climate change in the oceans: a challenge that demands “a necessarily global effort”

Carl Wunsch, laureate in Climate Change and Environmental Sciences has no doubt that global warming is real and “is putting civilization and the wider environment at extremely serious risk.” His scientific leadership has helped propel oceanographic research into the future, by enabling a precise assessment of the temperature increases and accumulation of ocean heat content linked to greenhouse gas emissions.

“I represent the accomplishments of what is a necessarily global, international effort in science, engineering and technology that has spanned many decades,” remarked the Professor Emeritus of Physical Oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Professor Wunsch recalled how, five decades ago, around 1975, “it became evident to much of the scientific community that continued additional CO2 would create a much more energetic atmosphere – one which, like an energized pendulum, would give rise to more extreme events – heat and cold waves, droughts and deluges, enormous rises in sea level, etc. – to an extent beyond human experience.”

At the time, however, the impact of global warming on the oceans raised fundamental questions that were “impossible to answer” with the technologies available. Back then the ship remained “the chief work platform for oceanographers,” one that was both costly and inefficient. Indeed “many parts of the ocean had never been observed at all,” to the extent that “their state was unknown, along with whether and how that state was changing.”

What would galvanize change was the pioneering vision of Carl Wunsch, who led the creation of a global ocean observation program leveraging the technological transformation brought about by advances including space-based satellite observation, the development of new in-situ measurement instruments, like robotic vehicles, and powerful computer systems capable of processing the vast volumes of data collected from oceans across the globe: “A system that incorporated the physics of temperature, salt and flow; chemistry, including nutrients and oxygen, and biology on all scales. All of this thanks to the work of thousands of scientists and engineers, universities, private and public laboratories, government and inter-governmental agencies, and many other organizations.”

From the vantage point of five decades of research, Wunsch is clear that what science is telling us and what the international community must understand is that “change is taking place everywhere in the ocean,” and “will be a serious concern to our children, grandchildren, and generations to come.” The challenge ahead of us, he concludes, is to “document and understand these risks,” as only then can we be “prepared to meet them.”

A practical philosophy of “real science” to understand and improve the world

For Nancy Cartwright, “the humanities are valuable in themselves, but they can, and should, also be practically useful, especially philosophy.” Over the past five decades, the Humanities laureate has cultivated an innovative philosophical vision of what science is and how it might be practiced. In the course of her inquiry, she has considered the theories and methods of not just the natural but also the social sciences, seeking ways to ensure that policy decisions are grounded in the best available evidence. “I think part of my work’s importance,” she reflected in her speech, “was to help launch a different approach that has since become influential: the study of science not as an abstract ideal but science as it is practiced.”

The professor at the universities of Durham (United Kingdom) and California, San Diego (United States) recalled how she started out in the philosophy of physics, a discipline she loved “not for its elegant theories but because it can help change the world. For instance, quantum mechanics was essential for developing lasers used in eye surgery and superconductors used in magnetic resonance imaging.”

In her first book, published in 1983 with the provocative title How the Laws of Physics Lie, Cartwright offered a critical take on what she saw as the excessive importance attributed to universal laws: “Rendered as universal claims, the laws do not get it right. They’re adjusted, corrected, supplemented, ignored, and even contradicted,” she argued. This, she explained, “was not a criticism of laws but a plea for a more realistic understanding of how they work for us. If we want better ways to use physics to change the world, we need to understand how it is used, both when it succeeds and when it fails.”

Cartwright also singled out “the re-legitimation of causation” and the “mapping out of defensible procedures for measuring causes” as fundamental contributions of her work. In contrast to the positivist and behaviorist schools, which viewed causality as too loose a notion, the laureate has devoted much of her career to demonstrating how “causal knowledge is essential. Understanding what can and cannot cause what – and how we learn that – is imperative.”

In closing, she highlighted the practical utility of her philosophical work in informing evidence-based policies in such diverse fields such as education, child protection, development economics, public health and criminology. In particular, she issued a plea for interdisciplinarity, another constant in her life’s work: “Nothing in science or philosophy does serious work on its own. Reliable achievements – whether a new law, device, concept or method – depend on many different forms of knowledge and methodology woven together. It takes a village to build an operating laser, a successful medical intervention or a reliable social policy.”

The harm of pursuing “incredible certitude” without “confronting uncertainty”

Economics, Finance and Management laureate Charles Manski summed up a central tenet in his five decades of research, when he warned that “policy analysis with incredible certitude does not serve society well,” in the sense that the overly specific claims some economists make may rely entirely on assumptions, and accordingly do more harm than good.

“In my econometric and welfare economic research,” he continued, “I have argued that policy analysis should face up to uncertainty. It is sometimes said that policy makers and the public are unwilling or unable to cope with uncertainty. But I believe that salutary change can occur if awareness grows that incredible certitude is harmful. Researchers should strive to provide credible policy analysis, recognizing the subtlety of decision-making under uncertainty.”

In his speech, the Board of Trustees Professor in Economics at Northwestern University (Evanston, Illinois) expressed his thanks for this recognition of “an intellectual journey of over fifty years, in which I have sought to combine perspectives from the fields of welfare economics, decision theory and econometrics, so the results may be useful to public policy evaluation.” He also spoke more about the specific harms that policy choices with incredible certitude can inflict on society, by “seeking to maximize some hypothetical social welfare rather than actual welfare; failing to recognize the value of research aiming at improving knowledge; and failing to appreciate the usefulness of decision strategies that help society cope with uncertainty.” For all these reasons, the econometrician has proposed a more credible method of policy analysis – one that is transparent about its limitations and better adapted to the complexity of real-world decision-making.

Manski took time to elaborate on the reasons the committee had granted him the Frontiers of Knowledge Award: for having developed partial identification, replace the misleading certainty of a specific value with the use of intervals or bounds, in the process reshaping “how economists think about what can be learned from data and maintained assumptions and how to report uncertainty honestly.” In his remarks, Professor Manski made clear why the committee hailed him as “a critical conscience of measurement in the social sciences,” who has devoted his energies to “strengthening the credibility” of research in economics and many other fields, with constructive skepticism as his chosen tool.

A data-driven social science capable of “predicting realities we cannot yet see”

In the Social Sciences category, the award was collected by René Bautista, Director of the General Social Survey (GSS), representing NORC at the University of Chicago, and Kathleen Cagney, Director of the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR).

For 85 years, said Dr. Bautista, NORC has held to one clear mission: helping society understand itself better. “We do this by asking people about their lives, beliefs and hopes, and by turning those answers into evidence for the public good. The GSS, launched in 1972, is one of the strongest examples of that mission.”

The head of the leading survey of values and attitudes in American society spoke of how its origin lay in a “simple but powerful” idea: namely, that single studies matter, but comparable trends can tell a deeper story. “Trends,” he explained, “bring us closer to separating the signal from the noise. They let us see whether attitudes change within a person’s life, across generations, or when major events unfold.”

In closing, Bautista insisted that “this award honors a core NORC belief: that carefully measuring social life does more than advance science. It builds trust in evidence and helps drive social progress. In times of rapid change and uncertainty, that principle matters more than ever. Our mission remains: we will keep listening to enduring questions and emerging voices. We’ll continue to track how families, communities, and society change.”

Accepting the award, Kathleen Cagney described it as a recognition of ISR’s commitment to “evidence-based science and methodological rigor in service to the public.”

“More than 75 years ago,” she recounted, “two University of Michigan researchers asked what seemed like a simple question: who would win the 1948 presidential election? The answer they found challenged the conventional wisdom of the day. Nearly everyone expected Thomas Dewey to defeat Harry Truman, but their data suggested otherwise. Truman won. And that moment helped demonstrate the power of rigorous social science, which is not simply to describe the world, but to predict and reveal the realities we cannot yet see.”

Dr. Cagney also referred to the growing challenges that public opinion polls face; among them, declining response rates, eroding trust in institutions, and the impact of new technologies, while stressing that emergent data sources and tools like artificial intelligence offer opportunities to build more robust, transparent replicable research, with equitable access.

“We often describe our work as measuring society,” she observed in closing. “But measurement is only the beginning. The ultimate purpose of social science is understanding: helping communities make better decisions, helping institutions serve people more effectively, and helping societies navigate uncertainty.”

The universal value of a cosmopolitan music that transcends borders

Unsuk Chin, the Music and Opera laureate, extolled the universal, cosmopolitan quality of music, capable of building bridges in a contemporary landscape hostile to independent creation. “As a composer of our time, I have always been interested in what transcends the national level,” affirmed the South Korean composer, who has lived in Germany since she was in her twenties.

The concept of autonomous art, she explained, has been essential to her career, along with the utopian pursuit of giving each work an individual, personal style, while maintaining a constant dialogue with the globally available state of musical material. These were the principles instilled in her by her mentor, the composer György Ligeti, who she studied with on arriving in Germany. “Over the years, it has become important to me not only to study the tradition and modernity of so-called ‘Western’ classical music, but also to engage with the traditional music of different cultures.” Her work with electroacoustic music, she added, had given her the freedom to explore the essence and “inner nature” of sound, and to seek an organic development of musical form from the natural properties of sonic matter.

“When I look at the list of wonderful past recipients of the award, I see cosmopolitans. At home in different cultures, they have helped to overcome the borders between traditional music circles and those of contemporary music,” said the composer, who also advocated for a musical life free of preferential treatment based on nationality, appearance, gender or aesthetic differences.

Chin nonetheless chose to begin her speech with the observation that “a composer speaks through their work, not through manifestos or declarations.” And certainly the public at yesterday’s gala concert had the chance to know her better through her Cello Concerto, performed by the Basque National Orchestra with German soloist Alban Gerhardt. The piece in question is in fact dedicated to the cellist, as its composition was the fruit of a collaboration between the two.

For the same reasons, she chose to focus on the three pillars that, in her view, support the existence of independent composers: interaction with the musicians whose interpretations bring the scores to life; funding structures that allow music to be created without regard to immediate profit; and the work of those who program or write about new music. “Without them,” she stated, “the phenomenon known as new classical art music could not exist.”

Expanding on this idea, she pointed out a paradox of today’s consumer society which is replicated in the musical sphere: “Media overstimulation exists hand in hand with the disappearance of biodiversity. The music scene is often caught between Scylla and Charybdis: on one side, raw market interests; on the other, culture wars and tribalism instead of cooperation.” The solution, she believes, lies in dialogue, something she has successfully integrated into her work, which is rooted in musical tradition while simultaneously renewing it, and draws from diverse cultural traditions to speak what is ultimately a universal language.

About the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards

The BBVA Foundation centers its activity on the promotion of world-class scientific research and cultural creation and their transmission to society, along with the recognition of talent through families of awards organized alone or in conjunction with scientific societies and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).

The Frontiers of Knowledge Awards recognize and reward contributions of singular impact in basic sciences, biomedicine, environmental sciences and climate change, information and communication technologies, social sciences, economics, the humanities and music. Since they were established in 2008, the goal of the awards has been to celebrate and promote the value of knowledge as a public good without frontiers, of benefit to all humanity; the best instrument at our command to take on the great challenges of our time, and expand our individual worldviews. Their eight categories are congruent with the knowledge map of the 21st century.

The Foundation is partnered in the awards by the country’s foremost public research organization, the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), which appoints evaluation support panels made up of leading experts in the corresponding disciplinary domain, who are charged with undertaking an initial assessment of candidates and drawing up a reasoned shortlist for the consideration of the award committees.

The Council also designates the chairperson of the eight committees deciding the eight award categories and collaborates in the election of their members, thus helping to ensure objectivity in the recognition of innovation and scientific excellence. The CSIC president, finally, has a prominent role in the award presentation ceremony that takes place yearly in Bilbao, the permanent home of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards.