World Sustainability Award 2027: A USD 100,000 Unrestricted Prize From the MDPI Sustainability Foundation for a Senior Researcher Whose Work Has Changed Sustainability Practice

World Sustainability Award 2027: A USD 100,000 Unrestricted Prize From the MDPI Sustainability Foundation for a Senior Researcher Whose Work Has Changed Sustainability Practice

The World Sustainability Award is the flagship prize of the MDPI Sustainability Foundation, a Swiss non-profit established in 2012 to support societally relevant research that contributes to regional and global sustainability. Nominations for the 2027 award opened on 1 July 2026 and close on 30 November 2026. One recipient receives USD 100,000, a customised trophy, and covered travel and accommodation to accept the award at the World Sustainability Forum 2027.

Two features set this prize apart from the crowded field of sustainability awards. The first is that the money is genuinely unrestricted — there is no project budget to defend, no work plan to submit, and no reporting obligation attached. The Foundation encourages recipients to put the funds toward continued research, academic development, or sustainability initiatives, but it does not require it. The second is that you cannot nominate yourself. Someone else who knows your work and can speak to its impact has to put your name forward. That single procedural rule shapes everything about how a strong candidacy comes together, and it is the reason this page spends as much time on nominators as on nominees.

Key Details at a Glance

What the Award Actually Provides

The headline figure is USD 100,000 in cash. In prize terms that places the World Sustainability Award below the very largest science prizes but comfortably above the typical society medal or association honour, and — crucially — it arrives without strings. For a senior researcher, unrestricted money of this size behaves differently from grant money. It can seed a line of enquiry that no funder will yet touch, buy a research assistant for work that falls between grant cycles, pay for the fieldwork trip that a project budget would not justify, or underwrite an open-access publishing programme. Some laureates use awards like this to fund students directly. The Foundation’s stated encouragement — that funds go toward continued research, academic development, or sustainability-related initiatives — is guidance, not a condition.

Beyond the cash, the recipient receives a customised trophy and is presented at the World Sustainability Forum 2027, the conference series the Foundation partially sponsors. The Foundation covers travel and accommodation for the ceremony. Attendance is expected, though the Foundation allows remote participation or representation by a delegate if attending in person is genuinely impossible — a sensible accommodation for a prize whose own subject matter includes the carbon cost of academic travel.

There is a publicity dimension worth understanding before you accept a nomination. Recipients are required to take part in publicity activities, and the Foundation may use the awardee’s name, image, institutional affiliation, and biography in its communications. For most academics this is unremarkable and welcome. If you have reasons to avoid a public profile, factor it in.

The award is non-transferable and may be granted to any individual only once. Past recipients are therefore out of the running; the 2026 award went to Distinguished Professor Zongping Shao, John Curtin Distinguished Professor at Curtin University, whose work sits in materials for clean energy conversion and storage. Looking at who has won before is one of the few reliable ways to calibrate what the Selection Committee means by “senior researcher of international standing.”

Who the Award Is For

The eligibility statement is short: senior researchers with demonstrated international recognition in sustainability-focused scholarship. That leaves real room for interpretation, so read it alongside the evaluation criteria, which do most of the defining work.

A competitive nominee will typically be a full professor, distinguished professor, institute or centre director, or the equivalent outside a university — someone two or more decades into a research career with a body of work that other people build on. Nationality and country of work are not restricted. Discipline is not restricted either, and that is the point: the award is explicitly interdisciplinary, and the Committee is structured to reflect that, with dedicated seats for the biosphere, society, and economy pillars.

Where the award is genuinely selective is in its requirement that the nominee’s research address at least two of those three pillars with clear demonstrated impact. This is the criterion that most quietly rules candidates out. A brilliant single-domain career — outstanding atmospheric chemistry with no articulated social or economic dimension, or first-rate environmental economics with no engagement with ecological systems — is a weaker fit than a somewhat less decorated career that visibly straddles two pillars. Researchers whose work sits at joins like climate and health, food systems and livelihoods, energy transition and equity, water and regional economies, or biodiversity and rural development are structurally well placed.

How the Selection Committee Evaluates Nominees

The Foundation publishes five evaluation criteria, and they read as a checklist that a nomination document should answer point by point.

Scientific excellence. A sustained record of high-quality research, whether fundamental or applied. The Committee is not asking for one landmark paper; it is asking whether the nominee has produced consistently strong work over time.

Sustainability pillars. Research addressing a minimum of two of the three pillars — biosphere, society, economy — with clear impact. This is the interdisciplinarity test described above.

Innovation and application. Original research offering feasible solutions with genuine potential for real-world implementation. “Feasible” is doing work here. Evidence of a technology deployed, a method adopted, a policy instrument taken up, or a practice changed carries more weight than the theoretical promise of impact.

Global alignment. A meaningful contribution to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Naming the relevant SDGs and showing the concrete link is better than gesturing at the framework.

Leadership and influence. Evidence of impact on the research community through mentorship, institution-building, or contributions to policy. Doctoral students trained and now leading their own groups, a centre founded, a national or international advisory role, a standard or assessment process shaped — these count.

The Committee applies peer-review standards to reach a merit-based decision. Its permanent members are Dr. Shu-Kun Lin, founder and president of MDPI and chairman of the MDPI Sustainability Foundation, and Prof. Dr. Ed Constable, former Vice President for Research at the University of Basel. At least three non-permanent members join them, with one expert representing each of the biosphere, society, and economy pillars plus additional interdisciplinary sustainability scholars. Non-permanent members serve three-year terms and may be reappointed afterwards.

Two consequences follow. First, your nomination will be read by people who are expert in one pillar and non-expert in the others — so the document must be legible to a smart reader outside your field. Second, decisions are final and not open to appeal, deliberations are confidential, and individual evaluation reports are not provided. There is no feedback loop to learn from. Get the nomination right the first time.

The Nomination Process, Step by Step

The mechanics are refreshingly light. The Foundation asks the nominator to:

1. Download and complete the official Nomination Form from the award page.
2. Prepare a detailed CV for the nominee, including a list of the most relevant publications and a list of funded projects.
3. Submit everything as a single PDF file, maximum 50 MB, through the online platform, which collects the nominator’s name and email address.

Note what is being asked for in the CV. Not simply a publication list, but the most relevant publications — a curated selection — and a list of funded projects. The funded-projects list is a signal that the Committee wants to see the nominee’s capacity to attract resources and to run substantial programmes of work, not only to publish.

The published guidance does not specify word limits for the form’s sections, whether letters of support are required or permitted, or formal criteria for who qualifies as a nominator beyond being a qualified third party familiar with the nominee’s work and impact. Those details live in the downloadable Nomination Form itself. Download it early rather than close to the deadline, so that any material you need to gather — a support letter, an impact statistic, a collaborator’s confirmation — can be assembled without a scramble. If anything in the form is ambiguous, the Foundation lists a direct contact: [email protected].

Timeline and What Happens After Submission

The gap between the deadline and notification is about eleven weeks — the window in which the Selection Committee reads, deliberates, and decides. Nominees are not interviewed, and there is no shortlist stage announced publicly, so the written nomination is the entire case. If no notification arrives by mid-February 2027, the nomination was unsuccessful; there will be no further correspondence and no feedback.

Preparation Strategy for Nominators

Because the nominator carries the whole burden, treat the task as writing an advocacy document, not filling in a form.

Start with the pillar map. Before drafting, write down which two or three of biosphere, society, and economy the nominee’s work touches, and identify the specific evidence for each. If you cannot fill two columns convincingly, this is probably the wrong prize for this candidate.

Lead with impact outside academia. Citation counts and h-indices establish scientific excellence but say nothing about the innovation-and-application criterion. The strongest nominations name the thing that changed: a treatment plant using the process, a national guideline that cites the framework, a crop practice adopted across a region, a company or spin-out that commercialised the method, a UN or government body that took the assessment into its own work.

Quantify carefully and honestly. “Informed policy in several countries” is weak. “The method was adopted in the 2024 national water quality standard in X and in the Y regional assessment protocol” is strong. Overclaiming is the fastest way to lose a reviewer who happens to know the field.

Curate the publication list. The form asks for the most relevant publications. Twenty well-chosen entries with a one-line note on why each matters serves the nominee better than four hundred undifferentiated references.

Write for the non-specialist committee member. Assume at least two readers are expert in a different pillar from the nominee’s home discipline. Define terms once, avoid unexplained acronyms, and make the significance explicit rather than implied.

Show the leadership record concretely. Name the students who now lead groups. Name the centre, the programme, the advisory panel, the standards committee. Institution-building is one of five criteria and is often the section nominators leave thinnest.

Common Mistakes

• Assuming you can nominate yourself. Self-nominations are prohibited. Every cycle, strong candidates lose the year by discovering this in November.
• Submitting a single-pillar case. The two-pillar minimum is explicit. A nomination that never addresses it invites the Committee to conclude the criterion is not met.
• Sending a raw CV with no framing. The CV is required, but a CV alone does not argue anything. The nomination form is where the argument lives.
• Treating the SDG criterion as a formality. Listing SDG numbers without showing the mechanism of contribution reads as box-ticking to reviewers who see it constantly.
• Multiple files or an oversized submission. The requirement is a single PDF, maximum 50 MB. Consolidate and compress before uploading.
• Nominating a past recipient. The award may be granted to an individual only once.
• Leaving the form download to the final week. The published web page does not contain the form’s full requirements; only the downloadable document does.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I apply for the World Sustainability Award myself? No. Self-nominations are not accepted. A qualified third party familiar with your work and its impact must submit the nomination on your behalf.

Who counts as a qualified nominator? The Foundation states only that the nominator must be a qualified third party familiar with the nominee’s work and impact. Detailed criteria, if any, are set out in the downloadable Nomination Form. In practice, senior colleagues, collaborators, former mentors or students, institutional leaders, and partners from policy or industry are all plausible nominators.

Is the prize money restricted to research? No. The USD 100,000 is unrestricted. The Foundation encourages recipients to use it for continued research, academic development, or sustainability-related initiatives, but does not impose that as a condition.

Do I have to travel to the ceremony? The recipient is expected to attend the World Sustainability Forum 2027, and the Foundation covers travel and accommodation. If attendance is genuinely impossible, remote participation or representation by a delegate is available.

Is there an age limit or a years-since-PhD limit? None is published. The award targets senior researchers with international recognition, which is a stage-of-career description rather than a numerical cut-off. Researchers earlier in their careers should look instead at the Foundation’s companion programme, the Emerging Sustainability Leader Award, which is listed on the Foundation’s site; check that page for its own amount, eligibility, and deadline, as the two awards run separately.

Will I receive feedback if the nomination is unsuccessful? No. Deliberations are confidential, individual evaluation reports are not provided, and decisions are final and not subject to appeal.

Does the nominee need to have published in MDPI journals? No such requirement is published. The Foundation is a separate Swiss non-profit and the evaluation criteria make no reference to publication venue.

Official Links and Contacts

• Award overview, criteria, and Selection Committee: https://mdpi-foundation.org/award
• Nomination form and submission platform: https://mdpi-foundation.org/award/apply-now
• Foundation home page (including the companion Emerging Sustainability Leader Award): https://mdpi-foundation.org/
• Email: [email protected]
• Telephone: +41 61 683 7734
• Postal address: MDPI Sustainability Foundation, St. Alban-Anlage 66, CH-4052 Basel, Switzerland

Next Steps

If you are considering nominating someone, the sequence is straightforward. Download the Nomination Form now and read it in full, because the published web page does not carry all of its requirements. Test the candidate against the two-pillar rule before you invest drafting time. Ask the nominee for a curated list of their most relevant publications and their funded projects rather than assembling it yourself from a public profile — they will know which entries carry weight and which grants are best cited. Draft the impact section first, since it is the hardest and the most differentiating. Then compile everything into one PDF under 50 MB and submit well ahead of 30 November 2026.

If you are the potential nominee, the useful action is not to wait. Identify two or three people who could credibly nominate you, approach one of them in good time, and offer to supply the CV, the curated publication list, and the funded-project list so that the work asked of them is writing the case rather than doing the research. Nominations that come together in the last fortnight tend to read like it.