The Science & SciLifeLab Prize for Young Scientists (AAAS + SciLifeLab/Knut & Alice Wallenberg Foundation, est. 2013) exists to reward the single best piece of recent doctoral research in life sciences, with global visibility as its primary currency: winning essays are published in *Science* magazine, and all four category winners are flown to Stockholm for a ceremony held the same week as the Nobel Prize. The $30,000 grand prize and $10,000 category prizes are secondary to the career-launching publication in one of the world's most-cited journals.

• HARD ELIGIBILITY — PhD must have been conferred between 1 January 2024 and 31 December 2025 (2026 cycle); work described must have been performed during graduate studies • Individual applicant only; essay must clearly delineate the entrant's personal contribution • Research must fall into one of four tracks: Cell & Molecular Biology; Genomics/Proteomics/Systems Biology; Ecology & Environment; Molecular Medicine • No AI-generated text or figures; use of any AI-assisted editing tools must be declared • Past Science Prize winners ineligible within 5 years; AAAS/SciLifeLab employees and relatives ineligible • Submission package: online form + ≤1,000-word essay (1 figure/table permitted, ≤15 refs) + one-page advisor/thesis-committee reference letter + thesis abstract (≤4 double-spaced pages) + publications/awards/experience list • Judging priorities (inferred from past winners and editorial board): novelty and mechanistic depth of the doctoral finding; clarity of writing for a broad scientific audience; societal/translational relevance; quality of the essay as a standalone Science-style piece

Winners consistently come from elite US and European doctoral programmes: 2025 Grand Prize went to Uche Medoh (Molecular Medicine); 2024 Grand Prize to Andrija Sente (Cell & Molecular Biology, European institution); 2023 Grand Prize to Zuzanna Kozicka (Ebert Lab, Harvard Medical School). Category winners include scientists from Caltech, NYU, Scripps/UCSD, ETH-adjacent labs. All winners present a single, clean mechanistic discovery from a completed PhD thesis — not independent post-degree research. The archetype is a mid-to-late PhD student at a research-intensive institution who solved one well-defined biological puzzle with strong methods and clear translational framing.

A scientist who received their PhD between January 2024 and December 2025 from a research-active institution, conducted focused doctoral thesis work within one of the four prize tracks, and can distil that work into a compelling 1,000-word narrative for a broad scientific audience. The ideal applicant has at least one peer-reviewed publication from the thesis work, a supportive thesis advisor willing to write a letter, and a finding with clear mechanistic novelty and societal relevance — not a portfolio of independent projects but a single thesis story told exceptionally well.