A new Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences has been awarded to 11 scientists, according to a press release from the Milner Foundation. The prize is sponsored by Genetech's Art Levinson, Google's Sergey Brin, Anne Wojcicki from 23andMe, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, and Yuri Milner, the founder of Mail.ru Group.
Eleven researchers have been named this year's recipients of the award and its $3 million prize. Those researchers are: Rockefeller University's Cornelia Bargmann, David Botstein at Princeton University, Lewis Cantley from Weill Cornell Medical College, the Hubrecht Institute's Hans Clevers, Napoleone Ferrara at the University of California, San Diego, Titia de Lange, also at Rockefeller, the Broad Institute's Eric Lander, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center's Charles Sawyers, Bert Vogelstein at Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, MIT's Robert Weinberg, and Shinya Yamanaka from Kyoto University.
Each year's winners will also serve on the selection committee.
"I believe this new prize will shine a light on the extraordinary achievements of the outstanding minds in the field of life sciences, enhance medical innovation, and ultimately become a platform for recognizing future discoveries," Levinson says in a statement.