What the Sloan, Gairdner, and Lasker Awards Reveal About This Year’s Nobel Trends

Each October the Nobel Prize captures worldwide scientific attention, not only honoring past breakthroughs such as penicillin, CRISPR and mRNA vaccines but also hinting at future research directions. In 2024 the physics and chemistry prizes went to AI‑driven work, underscoring AI’s expanding role in scientific discovery, a view echoed by Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind.

Sloan Research Award —established in 1955, it supports early‑career scientists (2–6 years post‑PhD) across physics, chemistry, computer science, mathematics, neuroscience, earth‑system science and economics with a two‑year $75,000 fellowship. To date, 58 Sloan laureates have later received Nobel Prizes, including 2023 physics laureate John Hopfield. The 2025 Sloan cohort, announced in February, lists 126 scholars spanning chemistry, computer science, earth‑system science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience and physics.

Gairdner Awards —founded in 1957, they honor outstanding contributions to disease treatment and the alleviation of human suffering, primarily in medicine and life sciences. Of the 434 awards given so far, 102 recipients have also become Nobel laureates. The 2023 list featured AlphaFold leaders Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, who later won the Nobel. The 2025 awards named eight scientists, including Gary Struhl, Spyros Artavanis‑Tsakonas and Iva Greenwald for pioneering Notch‑signalling research, and Michael J. Welsh and Paul Negulescu for breakthrough cystic fibrosis therapies.

Lasker Awards —established in 1946, they recognize excellence in basic medical research, clinical medical research and special achievement. The 2025 Basic Medical Research Award went to Dirk Görlich (Max Planck Institute) and Steven L. McKnight (UT‑Southwestern) for discovering protein low‑complexity domains and their role in intracellular transport. The Clinical Medical Research Award honored Michael J. Welsh, Jesús González and Paul A. Negulescu for transforming cystic fibrosis from a fatal disease into a manageable chronic condition. The Special Achievement Award recognized Lucy Shapiro of Stanford for her five‑decade work on bacterial gene‑logic coordination and the founding of Stanford’s developmental biology department.

While none of the highlighted awardees have yet produced an AI‑centric breakthrough comparable to AlphaFold, several Sloan winners are cross‑disciplinary innovators: César de la Fuente’s lab created the first AI‑designed antibiotic with in‑vivo efficacy, and Amy Orsborn is developing brain‑machine interfaces to restore motor function after spinal injury or stroke. Whether AI will claim a larger share of this year’s Nobel prizes remains to be seen, and HyperAI will continue to track the developments.