The Dream Chemistry Award is a competition like no other – it recognizes young chemists who dream of solving fundamental problems with bold ideas.
The competition is organized by the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Physical Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, with financial support from the IOCB Tech Foundation.
The Scientific Committee has selected the most outstanding projects from this year’s submissions, and five excellent young scientists from Singapore, Austria, Israel, the Netherlands, and Czechia will now have the opportunity to present their visions in person during the contest’s final and compete for the cash prize of EUR 10,000 and an iconic trophy.
Program
Monday, 1 December 2025
- 09:30–09:40 Opening
- 09:40–10:25 Finalist 1 – Xianbiao Fu (National University of Singapore): Electrochemical N2 Activation for Sustainable Ammonia Synthesis: Enabling the Agriculture-to-Energy Transition
- 10:25–11:10 Finalist 2 – Esther Heid (TU Wien): Reactivity Without Borders: A Multilingual AI for Chemistry
- 11:10–11:30 Coffee break
- 11:30–12:15 Finalist 3 – Muhammad Jbara (Tel Aviv University): Engineering Synthetic DNA-Binding Miniproteins to Modulate Gene Expression
- 12:15–13:30 Lunch break
- 13:30–14:15 Finalist 4 – Michael M. Lerch (Stratingh Institute for Chemistry, University of Groningen): A Chemical Operating System for Robots
- 14:15–15:00 Finalist 5 – Vít Svoboda (University of Chemistry and Technology Prague): From Molecular Chirality to Petahertz Quantum Computing
Tuesday, 2 December 2025
- 10:00–10:10 Award ceremony
- 10:10–11:00 Winner’s talk on their research
- 11:00–11:50 Guest Lecture – Prof. Marko Mihovilovic (TU Wien): Adventures at the chemistry-biology interface – three decades of dream reactions in green chemistry
- 11:50–11:55 Closing