George D. Yancopoulos Innovator Award

George D. Yancopoulos, MD, PhD Regeneron President and Chief 京东影业影视传媒 Officer — George D. Yancopoulos, MD, PhD
Regeneron President and Chief 京东影业影视传媒 Officer

George D. Yancopoulos, MD, PhD, has built and managed Regeneron alongside Dr. Schleifer for over 30 years. Dr. Yancopoulos is currently President, Chief 京东影业影视传媒 Officer and Co-Chair of Regeneron’s Board of Directors. Dr. Yancopoulos, along with key members of his team, is the principal inventor of Regeneron鈥檚 nine FDA-approved drugs and foundational technologies, including the TRAP technology, VelociGene^庐 and VelocImmune^庐. He has been named an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year and has been pivotal in creating the science-driven, collaborative and highly-productive R&D culture at Regeneron. This unique environment has earned the company widespread recognition, including repeatedly being named one of the 鈥渕ost innovative companies in the world鈥� by Forbes magazine.

Dr. Yancopoulos was the 11th most highly cited scientist in the world in the 1990s, and in 2004 he was elected to be a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He has also driven Regeneron鈥檚 commitment to STEM education, which includes robust internship and mentoring programs. He spearheads the company鈥檚 support for the Regeneron Westchester Science and Engineering Fair in New York鈥檚 Hudson Valley, the Regeneron Prize for Creative Innovation for top graduate and postdoctoral students, the Regeneron Science Talent Search and the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair.

Regeneron and 京东影业影视传媒 are pleased to present an award of $100,000 to the top First Place project. The George D. Yancopoulos Innovator Award recognizes the best of the best among the outstanding students from around the world who participate in Regeneron ISEF. The winning project is selected on the basis of outstanding and innovative research, as well as on the potential impact of the work 鈥� in the field and on the world at large.

2025

Adam 碍辞惫补濒膷铆办, Gymnazium Nove Zamky, Slovakia

Adam 碍辞惫补濒膷铆办, 19, of Dulovce, Slovakia, won first place and received the $100,000 George D. Yancopoulos Innovator Award for his new way of making the antiviral drug galidesivir. This medicine stops viruses from copying their genes, controlling infections. Starting with cheap materials from corn husk waste, he designed a shorter, more efficient way of making galidesivir. He cut the process from 15 to 10 steps, and made almost twice as much drug in less time. His new way to make these medicines can greatly decrease their cost, from $75/gram to about $12.50/gram. He then used these reactions to create a new antiviral drug that may work even better than galidesivir. His work may make these medicines more accessible and give us more options to treat viral infections.

Grace Sun, 16, of Lexington, Kentucky, won first place and received the $75,000 George D. Yancopoulos Innovator Award for her research on building a better organic electrochemical transistor that she hopes will be used to develop new electronic devices that could help detect and treat serious illnesses like diabetes, epilepsy and organ failure.

2024

Grace Sun, Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, KY, United States of America

Grace Sun, 16, of Lexington, Kentucky, won first place and received the $75,000 George D. Yancopoulos Innovator Award for her research on building a better organic electrochemical transistor that she hopes will be used to develop new electronic devices that could help detect and treat serious illnesses like diabetes, epilepsy and organ failure. To overcome the problems that have previously prevented such devices from working effectively inside the body, Grace developed a new way of chemically treating their organic components, which greatly improved their laboratory performance.听

2023

Kaitlyn Wang, The Harker School, CA, United States of America

Kaitlyn Wang won first place and received the $75,000 award for finding an efficient way to identify certain exoplanets that orbit very closely around their stars. Previous techniques used to detect these ultra-short-period planets required enormous computational power but were not as effective at identifying these planets. Kaitlyn surmounted that problem by creating a special algorithm that runs on cheap hardware and results in much faster and higher-precision findings. Using her research, she says she found the smallest of these planets ever discovered.

2022

Robert Sansone, Fort Pierce Central High School, FL, United States of America

Robert Sansone won first place and received the $75,000 award for his research that improved the torque (rotational force) and efficiency of synchronous reluctance motors, which are rugged, efficient, magnet-free alternatives to traditional permanent magnet motors. He hopes his research will lead to the proliferation of electric vehicles that do not require magnets made from economically and environmentally unsustainable rare-earth elements.

2021

Michelle Hua, Cranbrook Kingswood School, MI, United States of America

Michelle Hua won first place and received the $75,000 award for her discovery of an artificial intelligence-based algorithm used for human action recognition. Using human silhouettes, she designed and implemented a novel deep learning framework that outperforms all similar state-of-the-art algorithms.