Eligibility & Selection Criteria

Who Can Be Nominated

Individuals or teams (up to 3–4 people). Any nationality or institutional affiliation. Nominees must be living at the time of the announcement. The instrument or technique must be demonstrably functional, not conceptual. Self-nomination is not permitted; nominations must come from an established researcher familiar with the innovation.

What Qualifies as Instrumentation

We interpret “instrumentation” broadly. It includes hardware (telescopes, microscopes, and similar physical instruments), techniques (for example, laser tweezers), software (for example, AlphaFold), and cost or efficiency innovations that transform what’s practical (for example, PCR scaling).

Fields in Scope

Physical sciences, including chemistry, and biological sciences, including biochemistry. (Mathematics is under consideration for future cycles. Medical instrumentation and engineering tools are currently out of scope.)

Timing

The innovation should be recent enough that its creators are available to be celebrated, typically within the last ten years, and should have demonstrated real scientific impact, not just future potential.

How We Evaluate Nominations

Scientific impact (40%): has the instrument enabled significant discoveries or advanced a field? Innovation (25%): is it genuinely novel, or a transformative improvement on existing approaches? Accessibility & adoption (20%): has it been adopted by other researchers, and is it broadly useful? Technical excellence (15%): is it well-designed, robust, and reliable?