A list of the previous winners of the Boris Mints Prize including Nobel Laureates, leading economists and global leaders in climate science.
2021 Boris Mints Prize Winner: Dr. John N. Nkengasong
The 2021 Boris Mints Institute Prize for Global Challenges – the academic award for global solutions addressing society’s greatest challenges – was awarded to Dr. John N. Nkengasong.
Dr. Nkengasong has been recognized for his vital contribution to developing an effective and evidence-based response to the COVID-19 pandemic across Africa.
As Director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), Dr. Nkengasong has been a leading scientific voice in Africa’s fight against COVID-19.
He successfully convened an emergency meeting of all 55 Ministers of Health of the African Union, creating a vital forum for leaders across the continent to cooperate, collaborate, coordinate and communicate, leading to the adoption of a Joint Continental Strategy for the COVID-19 Outbreak.
Dr. Nkengasong also led the Partnership to Accelerate COVID-19 Testing (PACT), under the auspices of the African Union and the Africa CDC, accelerating testing capacity and enabling more than 90 million COVID-19 tests. Under his leadership, the Africa CDC established the Africa Pathogen Genomics Initiative and, in partnership with the World Health Organization’s Regional Office for Africa, established a network for SARS-CoV-2 genomic surveillance to identify COVID-19 variants circulating in Africa.
In a public health career spanning over 30 years, Dr. Nkengasong has published over 250 peer reviewed articles and has received acclaimed international awards and recognitions, including ground-breaking research into HIV and its characteristics in Africa.
The Prize Laureate is a powerful exponent of a sustainable, long-term public health vision for Africa, built on increased access to vital medications, vaccines, and diagnostics.
2020 Boris Mints Prize Winner: Professor Sabina Alkire
The winner of the 2020 Boris Mints Prize was Professor Sabina Alkire, for her exceptional contribution to understanding of the dynamics and implications of poverty and the impact of this work on the struggle against poverty throughout the world, and in particular, in developing countries.
Together with Professor James Foster, Professor Alkire developed the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) to provide accurate and actionable data on poverty. The MPI involves counting various types of deprivation that individuals experience at the same time, such as a lack of education or employment, poor health or living standards.
These profiles are then analyzed and used to construct a multi-dimensional index of poverty. Through this initiative and in collaboration with the United Nations and the World Bank, she has led the effort to employ the MPI as a means to identify the challenges of poverty, and the impact of policy on it, in over 100 developing nations.
With the COVID-19 pandemic set to increase global poverty rates for the first time since 1998, the 2020 Boris Mints Prize was awarded to Professor Alkire in recognition of her groundbreaking work and the vital importance of the MPI in facing the projected upsurge in global poverty.
2019 Boris Mints Prize Winner: Dr. Peter H. Gleick
Co-Founder and President Emeritus, The Pacific Institute for studies in Development, Environment and Security
Dr. Peter Gleick is a world-renowned scientist, innovator, and communicator on environmental, water and climate issues. In 1987 he co-founded the Pacific Institute, which he led as president until mid-2016.
Dr Gleick developed one of the first analyses of climate change impacts on water resources, the earliest comprehensive work on water and conflict, and defined basic human need and right to water – work that has been used by the United Nations and in human rights court cases. He also pioneered and advanced the concepts of the “soft path for water” and “peak water”.
2018 Boris Mints Prize Winner: Professor Michael Kremer
Gates Professor of Developing Societies, Dept. of Economics, Harvard University.
Michael Kremer is the Gates Professor of Developing Societies in the Department of Economics at Harvard University. Kremer’s recent research examines education, health, water, and agriculture in developing countries, and has won awards for his work on health economics, agricultural economics, and on Latin America. He helped develop the advance market commitment (AMC) for vaccines to stimulate private investment in vaccine research and the distribution of vaccines for diseases in the developing world.
He is the 2019 co-recipient of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty”.
He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and a Presidential Faculty Fellowship and was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. He has been named as one of Scientific American’s 50 researchers of the year. In the fall of 2010 he became the founding Scientific Director of Development Innovation Ventures (DIV) at USAID. Dr. Kremer received his PhD in Economics from Harvard University. He is a board member or adviser to several non-profit organizations, including Precision Agriculture for Development, WorldTeach and Evidence Action
2018 Boris Mints Prize Winner: Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs
Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs is a world-renowned professor of economics, leader in sustainable development, senior UN advisor, bestselling author, and columnist. Professor Sachs was the Director of the Earth Institute from 2002 to 2016. He is Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on the Sustainable Development Goals, and previously advised both UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the Sustainable Development Goals and Millennium Development Goals and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals.
Professor Sachs is widely considered to be one of the world’s leading experts on economic development, global macroeconomics, and the fight against poverty. His work on ending poverty, overcoming macroeconomic instability, promoting economic growth, fighting hunger and disease, and promoting sustainable environmental practices has taken him to more than 125 countries.