Meet the Jury
About the Programme
The Young Laureates Programme fosters innovation in the next generation. The programme, an expansion of the original Rolex Awards for Enterprise, provides visionary young men and women with funding and encouragement to implement their inventive ideas and gain the experience to become tomorrow’s leaders.
The awards are given to individuals whose projects tackle the world’s most pressing issues in five areas: science and health, applied technology, exploration, the environment and cultural preservation.
Candidates must be between 18 and 30 years old when the Award is presented. Through the application and selection process, they must demonstrate the feasibility of their projects, which should result in a positive impact on mankind.
Rewards
Each Young Laureate is granted US$50,000 over a period of two years. Funding of $25,000 in the first year gives the Young Laureates the time to bring greater focus to their ideas; the second instalment of $25,000 helps propel the projects forward.
History
The Young Laureates Programme, launched in 2009, was designed to complement the original Rolex Awards for Enterprise; it does not replace it. Established in 1976 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Oyster chronometer – the first-ever waterproof watch – the Rolex Awards reward extraordinary individuals with concrete projects that expand human knowledge and contribute to well-being. With the new initiative, Rolex is focusing on a younger generation of achievers who are tackling today’s biggest challenges with a similar spirit of enterprise.
The Young Laureates Programme and the original Rolex Awards for Enterprise will alternate every two years. In 2012, five Laureates and five Associate Laureates of the Rolex Awards will again be chosen. Anyone of any age or nationality can apply for the 2012 Rolex Awards. Application details will appear on the Rolex Awards website in June 2010.
Visit Rolexawards.com
Introducing the Jury
The Jury Speaks
The Young Laureates jury is composed of 10 international luminaries with expertise in the fields of Exploration, Environment, Science and Health, Applied Technology and Cultural Preservation. In March, the jury met in Geneva, Switzerland, to choose the programme’s inaugural honorees. The members convened for two days in order to rigorously evaluate the 27 finalists’ projects according to the programme’s criteria before selecting the five individuals worthy of the title Young Laureate.
Vijay Amritraj - India
Sportsman and Philanthropist
“There is no better drug than winning … but you learn more from your defeat because you know you have go to correct that mistake right away. Otherwise you are not going to get better or challenge yourself.”
Legendary Indian tennis champion Vijay Amritraj, 55, continues to hit new heights in diverse fields by calling on the discipline and “desire to achieve success” he developed as a sportsman in the 1970s and 1980s.
Rodrigo Baggio - Brazil
Social Entrepreneur
“In my dream, I saw poor young people using technology to better understand their reality and transform their reality… I decided to devote my life to transform that dream into reality.”
Rodrigo Baggio (www.cdi.org.br) is one of the world’s foremost champions of information technology and education for all. The Brazilian social entrepreneur, 40, has worked tirelessly to overcome what he calls "digital apartheid", explaining that "79 per cent of the population of our planet is excluded from accessing technical development."
Khoo Swee Chiow - Singapore
Adventurer
“The moment that changed my life was when I saw Mount Everest and I thought ‘I have to do this in my life’.”
A passionate adventurer, Singaporean Khoo Swee Chiow, 44, (daretodream.com.sg) has demonstrated extraordinary courage and perseverance to follow his dreams, breaking records as he conquers nature and challenges the limits.
Khoo, who overcame his childhood fear of heights with great determination, initially gained recognition in 1998 as a member of Singapore’s first Mount Everest expedition. The following year, he skied to the South Pole as the leader of his country’s first Antarctica expedition, and, in 2000, gave up his job as a systems analyst to pursue his enthusiasm for adventure full-time. Among his many daring accomplishments over a decade, Khoo is the first South-east Asian and the fourth person in the world to complete the “Adventure Grand Slam”: South Pole, North Pole and the Seven Summits. He has also performed cycling and swimming feats, and achieved two Guinness World Records, for scuba-diving and long-distance skating.
Adrienne Corboud Fumagalli - Switzerland
Economist, Media and Technology transfer Specialist
“My parents told me, ‘follow your passion’.”
“Success comes to those who generate ideas that are not only innovative but also break entirely new ground,” says Swiss economist Adrienne Corboud Fumagalli. Over the past two decades, Corboud Fumagalli, 51, has helped industry leaders “think outside the box and challenge the future”, by drawing on her experience as a leading authority on technology.
Awarded a doctorate in economics and social sciences from Switzerland’s University of Fribourg in 1991, Adrienne Corboud Fumagalli worked for five years as a researcher, lecturer and consultant before joining Swisscom (Switzerland’s main telecommunications company) in various management positions. In 2000, she moved to the Kudelski Group, a world leader in digital systems, where she spent eight years as corporate secretary and head of business development. She is currently vice president for Innovation and Technology Transfer at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). Her main responsibilities at this top-ranking scientific institution include developing its Innovation Square and Science Park, as well as fostering links between industry and research. For example, her team provides “innogrants”, funding for innovative projects with major commercial potential.
“Involvement in visionary research projects helps companies to better anticipate change,” says Dr Corboud Fumagalli, who recently served as a member of the Technology Pioneers selection committee of the World Economic Forum.
Nelly Robles García - Mexico
Archaeologist
“I grew up with archaeology in mind, not only archaeology but the people that still live there, in the indigenous communities so for me, it was very natural to orient myself to the humanities.”
Over more than two decades, Mexican archaeologist Nelly Robles García has contributed widely to the field of cultural resources management through her pioneering work that incorporates an array of dynamic, new strategies while taking into account the needs of local communities.
Dr Robles García, 53, earned degrees in archaeology and architectural restoration in Mexico before obtaining a Ph.D. in anthropology, in 1994, from the University of Georgia, where she was a Fulbright Scholar. During this period, she took up her first directorship, in 1985, as head of the Mitla Archaeological Research and Restoration Project in her native state of Oaxaca. Twelve years later, she was appointed director of Oaxaca’s Archaeological Zone of Monte Albán, a large pre-Columbian World Heritage Site. She remains at both posts today.
The author/editor of nearly a dozen books on Oaxaca archaeology and heritage management, Robles García has spoken at more than 100 national and international conferences on these subjects. For her efforts in linking North American and Mexican archaeologists, she won the Society for American Archaeology’s 2008 Presidential Award. Firmly committed to passing on her knowledge to the younger generation, Robles García teaches at universities in the U.S. and Mexico, often guiding graduate students in their theses.
Vicente Guallart - Spain
Architect
“For me, to be an architect was a way to interact with society. To think about cities is to think about how people will interact with each other. It’s another way to do politics.”
Hailed as one of Spain's most exciting architects, Vicente Guallart, 46, (guallart.com) has attracted international attention for his innovative work that connects architecture, nature and new technologies. His collaborations with diverse specialists – from geologists to sociologists and software designers – blur traditional boundaries. For Guallart, "architects cannot merely be passive problem-solvers", but must actively seek new solutions to "the art of dwelling".
He started Guallart Architects in Barcelona, in 1993, and since then has initiated numerous award-winning projects in Spain and abroad. Among his most lauded are the Denia Mountain project (the reconstruction of a quarry, selected for the 2004 Venice Biennale), three harbours in Taiwan, the master plan for the Sociópolis housing project in Valencia, Valencia's Sharing Tower and the Artificial Mountain in Wroclaw, Poland, for Expo 2012.
Guallart's interest in architectural research and education is exemplified by the Media House Project, which he co-directed with the MIT Media Lab, in 2000. In 2003, he was named director of the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia post-graduate programme. Guallart frequently lectures at leading universities and institutions around the world and has written authoritative works, including the Metapolis Dictionary of Advanced Architecture (co-author, 2003) and Geologics (2009).
Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka - Uganda
Veterinary Surgeon
“We are moving towards a phase where disciplines will not be so parallel; we will be working in a multidisciplinary manner to get things done.”
Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka has won acclaim for her pioneering programme linking public health with the conservation of an endangered species, the charismatic gorilla that shares over 98 per cent of its DNA with humans. "Helping the gorillas is about helping the people. It has to go hand in hand," says the 39-year-old veterinary surgeon.
Kalema-Zikusoka decided at an early age to devote her life to her passion – wild animals. As a teenager, she started a student wildlife club in Kampala before embarking on her veterinary studies in London, at the Royal Veterinary College, and then at North Carolina State University. Upon her return to Uganda in 1996, she became her country’s first wildlife veterinary officer, developing a wildlife conservation policy and highlighting the cross-contamination between humans and wildlife. In 2002, she founded Conservation Through Public Health, which is reducing the risk of mountain gorillas falling prey to human ailments in Uganda's remote Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, while improving the lives of the local people.
The recipient of the 2008 San Diego Zoological Society's Conservation Medal and the Whitley Gold Award (2009), Kalema-Zikusoka has been the subject of four television documentaries and of a popular children's book, Gladys Working as a Wildlife Vet. She frequently mentors young veterinarians.
Margaret D. Lowman - United States
Canopy Ecologist
“I was one of those ‘nature nuts’ as a kid. I think I started my career when I was about three years old.”
"I climb trees for a living," says Margaret Lowman, better known as “Canopy Meg” (canopymeg.com). For the past three decades, the 55-year-old American has earned an international reputation as a pioneer in forest canopy ecology, canopy plant-insect relationships and devising ingenious canopy access methods to explore this “eighth continent”, home to about half of life on earth.
Equipped with degrees in biology and ecology and a Ph.D. in botany, Lowman developed her childhood interest in building tree forts into mapping canopy biodiversity worldwide and spearheading the construction, in 1991, of North America’s first canopy walkway. Over the years, she has used science education to influence government policy and encourage environmental stewardship. Included among her many outreach initiatives are large-scale, distance-learning programmes, newspaper columns, science books for public audiences and nature camps for disadvantaged youth. Since 2003, she has been based at the New College of Florida where she is director of environmental initiatives and professor of biology and environmental studies. She also serves as executive director of the non-profit TREE Foundation.
"One of the biggest issues facing the next generation is keeping our kids linked to nature," says Dr Lowman, a sentiment reflected in her latest book, It’s a Jungle Up There (2006), written with her two sons.
Gary J. Martin - Munich
Ethnobotanist
“What happened [in Mexico and Guatemala] is an interesting flip… seeing people from communities wandering down forest paths with handfuls of plants and I just had this curiosity, ‘What are they going to use those for?’ … and I started to get into anthropology.”
Gary J. Martin has earned a reputation worldwide for pioneering the field of ethnobotany, the study of the interaction between people and their natural environment. For the 51-year-old American, biological and cultural diversity are “inseparable twins”.
After receiving degrees in biology and anthropology in the early 1980s, Martin set out to demonstrate “the inextricable links between our social and ecological worlds”. He worked for years with indigenous communities in Mexico before co-founding People and Plants, an international initiative combining ethnobotany and the sustainable use of plants. In 1996, he received his doctorate in anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley and moved to Marrakech. Three years later, with his characteristic entrepreneurial spirit, he founded the Global Diversity Foundation (globaldiversity.org.uk) which, under his direction, is helping indigenous people preserve their agricultural, biological and cultural heritage through an array of micro-projects encompassing research, training and social action.
Martin has taught and held workshops all over the world and for the past decade has served as a research fellow and lecturer at the U.K.’s University of Kent. From 2010, he will be a fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environmental Studies in Munich. He is the author of Ethnobotany (1995), a key reference manual in this discipline.
Paul Rose - United Kingdom
Explorer and Expedition Leader
“My love is for the oceans, this vast, almost immeasurable space that makes up 99 per cent of the living space on the planet.”
Polar guide, diver, mountaineer and broadcaster, Englishman Paul Rose, 57, (paulrose.org) has been helping scientists “unlock great global mysteries” for the past 30 years.
A defining moment of Rose’s life came during a student trip to the Brecon Beacons in Wales. “Alongside nature, at last the things I had trouble learning in school were making sense to me,” he reveals. Rose took up a life as a “modern-day explorer” in the late 1970s when he became a diving instructor and mountain guide in the United States. He later gained recognition as the base commander of Rothera Research Station, Antarctica, where he worked for 10 years (1992 to 2002) for the British Antarctic Survey, a position which earned him the Queen’s Polar Medal. He also received the U.S. Polar Medal for his work with NASA and the Ness Award for popularizing geography from the Royal Geographical Society, of which he was vice president from 1999 to 2002. Rose will return to Antarctica to lead a climate-change science project during the 2009-2010 season.
An author and popular television presenter of acclaimed programmes such as the BBC’s Oceans series, Rose is also an inspirational public speaker, motivating young field scientists and others of all ages to explore.