According to an article published on Science|Business, there’s a long tradition of offering scientists prize money to solve specific problems. After making the first such payment – of €2M for a way of preserving vaccines without refrigeration - the EU is planning more prize give-aways.
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The EU is to go ahead with offering €20 million in prize money to scientists who deliver solutions to pressing and seemingly intractable problems, after making the first such award under a pilot project launched in 2012.
Future prizes, to be announced and issued in 2015, are expected to cover health, transport, energy and materials, and renewable biological resources, with the money coming from the Horizon 2020 R&D budget.