The Einstein Foundation Award for Promoting Quality in Research
The Einstein Foundation Award for Promoting Quality in Research in cooperation with the QUEST Center for Responsible Research at the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH) aims to provide recognition and publicity for outstanding efforts that enhance the rigor, reliability, robustness, and transparency of research in the life sciences, natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities, and stimulate awareness and activities fostering research quality among scientists, institutions, funders, and politicians.
Promoting access to research results (‘Open Science’), embracing collaborative research (‘Team Science’) and increasing diversity in research are only some of the objectives established by the international jury.
To acknowledge the outstanding role early career researchers (ECRs) have in promoting research quality, ECRs will be invited to propose projects that foster research quality and value. Projects will be competitively selected for funding and internationally showcased.
→ Read more about what we honour
Award Categories
- Individual Award: Individual researchers or small teams of collaborating researchers can be nominated. The laureate will be awarded €150,000.
- Institutional Award: Governmental and non-governmental organizations, institutions, or other entities can apply or be nominated. The award-winning organization or institution will receive €100,000.
- Early Career Award: Early career researchers or small teams of collaborating researchers can submit a project proposal that seeks to foster research quality and value for an award of €100,000.
→ Questions on the award categories? Please visit our FAQs
The Jury
An international, interdisciplinary, and diverse panel of researchers and research quality activists convened by the Einstein Foundation Council will evaluate submissions and select awardees.
The Awarding Institutions
The Einstein Foundation Berlin and the BIH QUEST Center collaborate to present this international award to provide publicity for researchers and institutions seeking to improve the quality of research.
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 international cutting-edge science and research across disciplines and institutions in and for Berlin. To date, it has funded more than 200 researchers, including three Nobel laureates, over 70 projects, and seven Einstein Centers.
The BIH QUEST Center was founded in 2017 as part of the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité. QUEST develops and implements new approaches to support that biomedical research is conducted in a trustworthy manner, provides useful results, and meets ethical standards. The focus is on Open Science, Indicators & Incentives, Quality Assurance, Patient & Stakeholder Engagement, Education & Training and Meta Research.
The Award Funders and Partners
The individual and institutional awards are funded by the Wübben Stiftung Wissenschaft, while the BIH QUEST Center for Responsible Research supports 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 for Responsible Research in promoting and implementing the award.
The Trophy
The Einstein Foundation Award trophy is made of chalk. It was created by Axel Kufus, Professor of Design at the Institute for Product and Process Design at the Berlin University of the Arts. The trophy's concept is based on the idea of honoring a basic tool that has been used to bring knowledge into the world for as long as we can remember.
“A scientist will never believe that the results of his efforts are definitive.”
Albert Einstein, 1945
Extract of a letter to J. Lee, September 10th 1945; Einstein archive 57-601, German original: “Ein Wissenschaftler wird nie verstehen, warum er allein deshalb an etwas glauben sollte, weil es in einem bestimmten Buch steht. (...) Er wird niemals glauben, daß die Ergebnisse seiner eigenen Bemühungen endgültig sind.” Found in: A. Calaprice: Einstein sagt, Munich (1997)
Chalk is a hybrid thing: solid and durable, soft and ephemeral. It brings thoughts, ideas, explanations and evidence to life—yet it can be easily erased to make room for something new. Writing or drawing with chalk gives you freedom to err, to add corrections, and reconsider your ideas.
Thus, chalk resembles quality: It symbolizes the importance of questioning something again and again if we want our knowledge of the world to grow. This masterpiece made of chalk invites the awardees of the Einstein Foundation Award for Promoting Quality in Research to share their next discoveries with the world.
