Einstein Foundation Award 2026: Apply now for a €350,000 prize advancing research integrity and quality

The Einstein Foundation Award honors researchers, institutions, and initiatives worldwide whose work significantly advances research quality across all disciplines

2026-01-26

(Press-News.org) Researchers at all career stages, as well as institutions and initiatives, are invited to apply or nominate candidates for the prestigious international €350,000 Einstein Foundation Award – the only prize dedicated to honoring outstanding contributions to strengthening the rigor, reliability, robustness, and transparency of research across the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and life sciences.

The submission deadline is April 30, 2026, with winners to be announced at the end of the year.

The Einstein Foundation Award for Promoting Quality in Research recognizes initiatives that enhance research integrity and transparency, foster knowledge production aimed at sustainable solutions, and reform research systems and incentive structures to reward quality. It also honors efforts to promote a culture of integrity and responsible leadership, and to preserve and advance the scholarly infrastructures and resources that support trustworthy research across disciplines.

Early career researchers are key drivers of change in research culture. While the Individual and Institutional Awards acknowledge initiatives that have already demonstrated substantial impact, the Early Career Award supports promising new ideas and projects that seek to advance transparency, rigor, and integrity in research.

Together with the QUEST Center for Responsible Research at the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH), the Einstein Foundation Berlin will honor candidates in three categories: The €150,000 Individual Award is presented to researchers or small groups of researchers, while the Institutional Award, worth €100,000, is aimed at institutions and initiatives. The €100,000 Early Career Award recognizes innovative ideas developed by researchers at the beginning of their careers.

Award winners in 2025

Personality psychologist Simine Vazire, Professor of Psychology, Ethics, and Wellbeing at the University of Melbourne, received the Individual Award for advancing methodological rigor, reproducibility, and collaborative research in psychology, and for shaping initiatives such as the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS) and the journal Collabra. The Institutional Award went to the Brazilian Reproducibility Initiative, a nationwide effort to systematically evaluate research results in laboratory biology and the largest coordinated replication project in the field worldwide. The initiative showcases the transformative potential of country-level efforts to improve research. The Early Career Award was presented to Maximilian Sprang, bioinformatician at the Medical Center of Mainz University, for his project Erring Rigorously, which aims to improve reproducibility and reliability in functional genomics by distinguishing true biological signals from technical artifacts in high-throughput sequencing.

Jury

Submissions will be evaluated by an international jury chaired by Marcia McNutt, President of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), with Suzy Styles, Associate Professor at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), serving as vice chair. The panel reflects diverse disciplines, regions, and career stages, ensuring a rigorous evaluation of all nominations and proposals.

Partners

The Individual and Institutional Awards are funded by Wübben Stiftung Wissenschaft, while the BIH QUEST Center funds the Early Career Award. Additional resources are made available by the State of Berlin. The publisher Nature Portfolio, the Public Library of Science (PLOS), the National Academy of Sciences, the Berlin University Alliance, the Max Planck Society, and the Max Planck Foundation support the Einstein Foundation Berlin and the BIH QUEST Center in promoting and implementing the award.

All information about the call for submissions, the award categories, selection criteria, and the jury, along with portraits of previous years’ winners and presentations by the finalists in the Early Career Award category, can be found at: award.einsteinfoundation.de

The Einstein Foundation Berlin is an independent, not-for-profit, science-led funding organization established as a foundation under civil law in 2009. Since then, its task has been to promote cutting-edge international science and research across disciplines and institutions in and for Berlin. To date, it has funded ten Einstein Centers, over 70 projects, and more than 250 researchers, including three Nobel laureates.

The BIH QUEST Center for Responsible Research was founded in 2017. It conducts research on research (meta research) and derives from it offers for the scientific community. With this mission, the BIH QUEST Center is unique in Europe. Through its projects and services, the BIH QUEST Center also examines the role of an academic institution in enhancing the trustworthiness, usefulness, and ethical accountability of biomedical research.

Wübben Stiftung Wissenschaft is a private grant-making foundation based in Berlin. It aims to help strengthen Germany as an excellent, internationally visible, and competitive science and research hub. Outstanding international academics at various career stages are at the heart of its funding activities. In addition to the Einstein Foundation Award, Wübben Stiftung Wissenschaft supports the Einstein Foundation’s “Einstein Strategic Professorships” funding program.

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