2026 Essay Competition
Earlier this year, Astera invited active research scientists to identify a concrete structural bottleneck in their field and propose a testable experiment to address it. Read the full competition prompt and criteria, as well as our original blog post explaining our rationale.
Submissions were evaluated by a panel with a mix of scientific expertise and active interest in supporting metascience: Seemay Chou, Becky Pferdehirt, Prachee Avasthi, Michael Nielsen, Matt Clancy, and Jacob Trefethen. We’re excited to share more here about the winning entries!
In summary, eight essays were recognized for combining a concrete challenge with a credible path forward. In lieu of selecting a top winner or reverting to consensus, we decided to expand our prize budget and award all top eight finalists below.
In addition to the top finalists, we were blown away by how many scientists were willing to openly share their ideas and challenges. We hope you will take the time to read more of the submissions. Below are links to all 186 public submissions, organized by theme in the spreadsheet below.
The entire catalog of essays taught us a lot about problems scientists live with every day. We are grateful to all the researchers who decided to share their ideas. And we hope this catalyzes more public conversation about how to improve our scientific engine moving forward.
We awarded 8 submissions: five 2nd place prizes of $15,000 each and three 3rd place prices of $5,000 each. Thank you to all authors for their submissions!
2nd Prize ($15,000)
Niveditha Iyer — Learning Well from Being Wrong
Prashant Garg — Where Should Science Go Next?
3rd Prize ($5,000)
Matthew Leighton — Catalyzing Multidisciplinary Frontier Science
Harshu Musunuri — The missing institution to link infectious and chronic disease
Read the original 2026 Essay Competition prompt, criteria, eligibility rules, and terms: View Competition Prompt