Three Scientists Win Britain's Largest Unrestricted Science Prize - All of Them Women
Britain's largest unrestricted science prize went to three early-career researchers on February 24, 2026, each receiving 100,000 pounds with no conditions attached to how the money is spent. All three are women - only the second time in the nine-year history of the UK Blavatnik Awards that all three laureates have been women scientists.
The awards, administered by The New York Academy of Sciences with funding from the Blavatnik Family Foundation, recognize exceptional research by scientists aged 42 or younger across three disciplines: Life Sciences, Chemical Sciences, and Physical Sciences and Engineering. This year's laureates work on problems ranging from the molecular machinery of aging to the origins of planetary systems.
Life Sciences: mapping the enzyme that protects chromosome ends
Dr. Thi Hoang Duong (Kelly) Nguyen, at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, won the Life Sciences prize for her work on telomerase - an enzyme whose activity is central to cellular aging, premature aging disorders, and cancer.
Telomerase maintains the protective caps at chromosome ends called telomeres. Without it, chromosomes shorten with each cell division until the cell can no longer divide. With too much of it, cells can divide indefinitely - the defining feature of many cancers. Understanding exactly how the enzyme works at the molecular level has been technically difficult because telomerase is large, structurally flexible, and present in tiny quantities in most cells.
Nguyen applied cryo-electron microscopy to produce the first atomic-level structural model of telomerase. Her work identified how the enzyme engages with the chromosome end during DNA replication, why its activity becomes dysregulated in premature aging conditions, and which specific regions of the enzyme might serve as targets for drugs aimed at cancer or age-related disease.
Chemical Sciences: seeing the invisible electrons in energy metabolism
Prof. Maxie Roessler, at Imperial College London, won the Chemical Sciences prize for developing electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy techniques capable of capturing transient states in biological electron transfer - the process underlying how cells generate energy.
Cellular energy metabolism depends on cascades of electron transfers between proteins. The intermediate states in these cascades are fleeting and chemically reactive, making them extraordinarily difficult to study. Roessler developed new EPR methods that can detect and characterize these short-lived electron states, revealing the hidden steps in respiratory and photosynthetic energy production.
Physical Sciences and Engineering: where planets are forming right now
Dr. Paola Pinilla, at University College London, won the Physical Sciences and Engineering prize for her research on protoplanetary discs - the rotating clouds of gas and dust around young stars from which planets form.
Pinilla combined telescope observations with computational modeling to discover that pressure structures within these discs act as particle traps, concentrating dust into rings and gaps where conditions for planet formation are favorable. Her work also addressed how water and organic molecules - the building blocks of life - can survive and accumulate within these discs.
The award program
The 91 nominees for the 2026 awards came from 46 academic and research institutions across the UK. Nine finalists were selected before three laureates were identified. The six remaining finalists each received 30,000 pounds. Since the program launched in the UK in 2017, 73 scientists have received nearly 3.3 million pounds in prize funding.