Frontiers Planet Prize
award conditions
These Frontiers Planet Prize Award Conditions form an integral part of the Award Agreement between the Frontiers Research Foundation and any Recipient of the Frontiers Planet Prize (including the Main Recipient and, if applicable, any Co-Recipient, as such terms are defined below).
1. Definitions
Preamble
The capitalized terms used in these Award Conditions shall have the meaning defined below:
1.1 “Award” means any monies awarded to the Main Recipient by the Frontiers Research Foundation as part of the Frontiers Planet Prize and Award Summary.
1.2 “Award Agreement” means the agreement consisting set of the Award Summary (respectively for any Co-Recipient, of the Co-Recipient Form), the Preliminary Research Plan and these Award Conditions.
1.3 “Award Conditions” means these Frontiers Planet Prize Award Conditions
1.4 “Award Summary” means the summary attached to the Award letter providing the details of the Award.
1.5 “Co-Recipient” means any Institution with whom the Main Recipient has agreed to share the Award, as designated in any signed Co-Recipient Form.
1.6 “Foundation” means Frontiers Research Foundation, a Swiss law foundation registered under no. CHE-113.160.145 and having its address at Avenue du Tribunal-Fédéral 34, 1005 Lausanne, Switzerland.
1.7 “Main Recipient” means the Institution designated in the Award Summary.
1.9 “Participant” means the Principal Investigator/Lead Scientist and any other person or third party working in any capacity on the activities in view of achieving the Purpose.
1.10 “Preliminary Research Plan” the high level overview of the contemplated use of the Award for the Purpose.
1.11 “Principal Investigator/Lead Scientist” means the lead researcher who applied for the Frontiers Planet Prize on behalf of the research team responsible for the research project defined in the Award Summary, or any other senior member of the research team as indicated in the Award Summary.
1.11 “Purpose” means the purposes specified in the Award Summary and any Co-Recipient Form.
1.12 “Recipient” means the Main Recipient and, if applicable any Co-Recipient.
2.1 The Award Agreement forms a contractually binding agreement between the Recipient and the Foundation.
2.2 The Recipient is responsible to inform Participants of all requirements applicable to them pursuant to the Award Agreement and shall take all reasonable steps to ensure the compliance of all Participants with these requirements.
2. Award Agreement
3.1 The Award shall be used only for the Purpose. The Foundation may request the return of the full amount or any amount of the Award which is not allocated to the Purpose.
3.2 The Recipient is required to document and account for the use of the Award as necessary to demonstrate that it was solely used for the Purpose.
3. Purpose
4.1 To ensure compliance with these Award Conditions and allow traceability and transparent reporting, the Award shall be strictly earmarked for use in relation to the Purpose and shall be accounted and managed by the Recipient independently from any other funds used by the Recipient to finance its other administrative or project activities.
4.2 The full amount of the Award shall be allocated to the Purpose, without deduction of any overheads or indirect costs by the Recipient. Overheads or indirect costs are defined as costs that are not directly linked to the Purpose but are necessary for the general operation of the Recipient and the execution of activities it carries out. Such overheads or indirect costs include, in particular, the Recipient’s administrative costs, utilities, rent for facilities, general office supplies, depreciation of equipment, and other costs associated with providing a supportive environment for research. The amount of the Award shall be allocated for the work of the research group who conducted the awarded research, in principle led by the Principal Investigator/Lead Scientist.
4.3 The following actions require the prior written approval of the Foundation:
a) the use of the Award funds to create any new research-related body or structure, whether incorporated as a legal entity or not;
b) the sharing of the Award with any third party, which must follow the process described in Section 5 below;
c) the delegation or sharing of authority over decisions regarding the use of the Award funds with any new or existing entity.
d) any change of Principal Investigator/Lead Scientist
4.4 In the event that the Principal Investigator/Lead Scientist or the research group having received the Award transfers to another institution, the Recipient shall, in good faith and upon agreement with the Foundation, ensure that any remaining Award money follows the Principal Investigator/Lead Scientist to the new institution. This is to ensure that the Award money continues to be utilized for the Purpose.
4. Use of funds
5.1 In cases where senior contributors to the awarded research are based at other institutions, the Main Recipient must work collegially with these researchers in using the Award amount for the fulfilment of the Purpose through research conducted at such other institution. In this context, if another institution should benefit from the Award, as a Co-Recipient, the Recipient undertakes to communicate without delay and in writing to the Foundation:
a) general information about the proposed Co-Recipient including the name of the institution, its address and the name of the person duly authorized to represent it.
b) ) a brief description of the involvement of the proposed Co-Recipient in the awarded research
c) the proposed allocation of the Award between the Recipient and the proposed Co-Recipient
d) the proposed use of the Award by the Co-Recipient
e) any further information as reasonably required by the Foundation.
5.2 If the Foundation agrees with the Main Recipient sharing the Award with the proposed Co-Recipient, the Recipient shall cause the Co-Recipient to sign a Co-Recipient Form and provide the signed copy to the Foundation before any part of the Award is transferred to the Co-Recipient.
5.3 The Recipient agrees that any amounts paid to a Co-Recipient will be clearly documented and included in the reports foreseen in Section 6.
5. Sharing of the Award
6.1 The Main Recipient shall provide reports to the Foundation detailing the use of the Award each year on 30 September. The report shall include all relevant information about the activities undertaken for the Purpose by the Principal Investigator/Lead Scientist and any other Participant, since the payment of the Award or the last report provided, as well as the planned activities for the remainder of the duration of the Agreement. The Recipient agrees to complete or amend the reports to reflect the Foundation’s feedback if requested.
6.2 Upon achieving the Purpose or upon use of all the funds granted under the Award, the Recipient shall provide the Foundation with a final report of the activities carried out with the Award, including an assessment of the social and environmental impact of such activities.
6.3 The Main Recipient’s reports provided in Section 6.2 and 6.3 shall include all relevant information regarding the Co-Recipient’s use of their shared portion of the Award and the Co-Recipient(s) shall provide the Main Recipient will all required information as necessary to enable the Main Recipient to fulfill its reporting obligations.
6.4 The Recipient agrees to provide any additional information or document requested by the Foundation as reasonably necessary for the Foundation to verify the respect by the Recipient or any Co-Recipient of the conditions included in this Award Agreement.
6.5 The Foundation reserves its rights to consult the budget and/or the accounts of the Recipient or any Co-Recipient relating to the use of the Award.
6. Reporting
7.1 The Recipient shall ensure that all its activities in relation to the Purpose are carried out in accordance with the requirements arising from the Award Agreement, as well as in compliance with all relevant:
a) laws, regulations and codes of practice, including but not limited to those relating to health and safety, data protection, modern slavery, safeguarding, anti-bribery, tax evasion and relevant export regulations and financial sanctions laws; and
b) ethical and scientific guidelines and principles.
7.2 The Recipient will not use the Award or any part thereof for lobbying purposes or for similar legislative or political activities.
7.3 The Recipient shall take necessary steps to ensure that Participants’ activities in relation to the Purpose comply with the same requirements.
7. Compliance
8.1 Whether patentable or not, as between the Recipient and the Foundation, all data and results, subject to copyright or not, generated by the Recipient and any Participants in relation to the Purpose shall be the sole property of the Recipient and the Recipient shall own all intellectual property rights pertaining thereto.
8.2 Unless otherwise agreed in writing between the Foundation and the Recipient, the Foundation has the right to use information relating to the awarded research, materials and documents received from the Recipient (notably summaries for publication, deliverables, as well as any other material, such as pictures or audio-visual material, in paper or electronic form) or any Participant for policy, information, communication, dissemination and publicity purposes.
8.3 The right to use the Recipient’s materials, documents and information is granted in the form of an open access Creative Commons Attribution License (as defined in Section 10.2 below), or an equivalent royalty-free, non-exclusive and irrevocable license, which includes the following rights for the Foundation: (a) use for its own purposes; (b) distribution to the public after first publication made by the Recipient; (c) editing or redrafting (including shortening, summarizing, inserting other elements (e.g. meta-data, legends, other graphic, visual, audio or text elements), extracting parts (e.g. audio or video files), dividing into parts, use in a compilation); (d) translation, storage in paper, electronic or other form, archiving, in line with applicable document-management rules; (e) processing, analyzing, aggregating the materials, documents and information received and producing derivative works. The Foundation may assign the activities mentioned above under letters b) to e) to third parties, under its own responsibility.
8.4 If materials or documents are subject to moral rights or third-party rights (including intellectual property rights or rights of natural persons on their image and voice), the Recipient must ensure that it complies with its obligations under these conditions (in particular, by obtaining the necessary licenses and authorizations from the rights holders concerned).
8. Intellectual property rights, publications
9.1 Full disclosure of the Award must be made to the Recipient’s administration or other competent authority as appropriate
9.2 Each Recipient will (and shall ensure that the Participants will):
a) disclose to all audiences and in all publications relating to the activity carried out with the Award that the Foundation has provided an Award to support such activity;
b) acknowledge support from the Foundation in material related to funded activity; and
c) disclose any other relationship the Foundation may have with any individual speaker, collaborator, moderator or Recipient which a reasonable and ethical person would expect to be disclosed in the relevant context.
9.3 The Foundation may publicly disclose the financial and non-financial support provided to the Recipient, including, without limitation, the Recipient’s name, the Award and the Purpose, and the Recipient agrees to such disclosure and shall ensure that the Participants agree to the disclosure of their name, title and affiliation.
9. Disclosure
10. Dissemination and commitment to Open Science
10.1 The Recipient must disseminate the outcome of the awarded research as soon as feasible, in a publicly available format, subject to any restrictions due to the protection of intellectual property, security rules or legitimate interests.
10.2 The Recipient must ensure that any publication peer-reviewed scientific publications relating to the Purpose is made in open access and in compliance with the principles of Open Data in particular, that:
a) at the latest at the time of publication, a machine-readable electronic copy of the published version or the final peer-reviewed manuscript accepted for publication, is deposited in a trusted repository for scientific publications;
b) immediate open access is provided to the deposited publication via the repository, under the latest available version of the Creative Commons Attribution International Public Licence (CC BY) or a licence with equivalent rights; for monographs and other long-text formats, the licence may exclude commercial uses and derivative works (e.g. CC BY-NC, CC BY-ND); and
c) information is given via the repository about any research output or any other tools and instruments needed to validate the conclusions of the scientific publication.
d) all research data generated with Award support is made openly accessible and reusable by other researchers in accordance with the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles.
10.3 Recipient (or authors) must retain sufficient intellectual property rights to comply with the open access requirements. Metadata of deposited publications must be open under a Creative Common Public Domain Dedication (CC 0) or equivalent and provide information at least about the following: publication (author(s), title, date of publication, name, acronym and number; licensing terms; persistent identifiers for the publication, the authors involved in the research and, if possible, for their organizations and the Award. Where applicable, the metadata must include persistent identifiers for any research output, or any other tools and instruments needed to validate the conclusions of the publication
11.1 The Award does not create any form of joint venture or other partnership between the Recipient, any Participant and the Foundation and it is the sole responsibility of the Recipient and of the Participant to carry out the awarded research project in compliance with the Purpose and to comply with any associated contractual or legal obligations.
11.2 The Foundation does not accept any responsibility for financial or other liability incurred by any Recipient or Participant that may arise out of any activities carried out in relation to the Purpose or any Award.
11.3 The Foundation does not employ any of the Participants or any other members of the Recipient. It is the Recipient and Participants’ responsibility to issue any necessary contracts of employment in relation to the Purpose and to comply with any relevant employment law and regulation.
11.4 The Foundation cannot be held responsible in case of delay or impossibility to transfer the Award amount to the Main Recipient for reasons beyond its control (embargo, financial regulations or other special circumstances beyond the Foundation’s control).
11. Independent parties and waiver of liabilities
12.1 The Foundation may at any time reduce or revoke the Award and require the return of any Award money, if the Recipient, any Participant (or any other person having powers of representation, decision-making or control, or person essential for the award/implementation of the Purpose): (i) has committed irregularities or fraud in the use of the Award (ii) has used the Award in a manner inconsistent with the Purpose or has otherwise breached any material obligation of the Recipient under the Award Agreement (including serious breach of ethical or scientific principles, or failure to report on the use of the Award to the Foundation) or (iii) is bankrupt, subject to insolvency or winding up procedures, its assets are being administered by a liquidator or by a court, it is in an arrangement with creditors, its business activities are suspended or it is in any analogous situation arising from a similar procedure provided for under national legislation or regulations. The Foundation may also suspend the payment of any future instalment of the Award to the Recipient in case it has reasons to believe that any of the abovementioned events has occurred or is likely to occur until the situation is resolved to the satisfaction of the Foundation. The Foundation will formally notify the Recipient of the reduction, respectively of the revocation or suspension, and the reasons why. The Recipient concerned may, within 30 days of receiving notification, submit observations if it disagrees with the reduction, respectively, the revocation or suspension. The Foundation will take these arguments into account but will use its sole discretion in deciding whether to reduce or revoke the Award or suspend the payment of any installment, depending on the seriousness of the situation. In the event of a partial or total reduction (revocation) of the amount of the Award, the Frontiers Research Foundation will be entitled to obtain reimbursement of the Award amount paid in accordance with these conditions, within 20 days of the notification of the reduction or revocation decision.
12.2 The Foundation may require the Recipient to establish an escrow account with a reputable financial institution agreed upon by both parties where the Foundation deems such measure necessary to ensure its use for the Purpose and the original intent of the Award.
12. Award reduction or revocation
13.1 The Award Agreement is governed by the laws of Switzerland.
13.2 Any dispute arising out in relation to the Award Agreement shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Lausanne, Switzerland.
13. Govering Law and Jurisdiction
Last updated : 22 July 2025
Frontiers Research Foundation
c/o Frontiers Media SA
Avenue du Tribunal-fédéral 34
1005 Lausanne Switzerland