Visionaries who change the world

Explorers, inventors, pioneers. Exceptional researchers pursuing bold questions at the frontiers of science and the humanities. From early-career scientists to distinguished scholars, we back these visionaries through our unique awards, grants, professorships and fellowships.

Meet our pioneering community

The power of fundamental research

Fundamental research is the ultimate expression of human curiosity, paving the way for every breakthrough that changes our world. Through our unique awards, grants, professorships and fellowships, we support the exceptional minds asking the questions that matter.

Discover our pioneering research

Insight grows when shared

Emerging from a specific fundamental question and years of careful research, insight has the power to transform understanding, methods and fields of inquiry. We illuminate the insights from the NOMIS community of researchers. Explore the Insight films, publications, news and stories born from this pioneering community.

Explore our insights and discoveries

NOMIS Foundation

“NOMIS is all about enabling outstanding talent to take on high-risk research.”
— Georg Heinrich “Heini” Thyssen, NOMIS Founder

About the NOMIS Foundation

NOMIS FOUNDATION

Every discovery begins
with a spark

We support pioneering minds who work at the intersection of disciplines to untangle the most complex aspects of nature, the mind and society.

Meet our pioneering researchers

People are our inspiration | Research is our passion | Insight is our reward

Insight

Knowledge-sharing through scientific publications, films, news and stories.

Our insights

NOMIS Foundation researchers standing around a table discussing something

People

Visionaries who follow their curiosity with courage.

Our community

Research

Boundary-crossing, foundational science that opens new fields.

Our research

Stories

Svante Pääbo
2017 NOMIS Awardee

The ancient question • Paleogenomics

Who are we? Where do we come from?
How does the past shape our future?

Long before we could imagine reading DNA, Svante Pääbo dared to ask: Who are we, really? He went searching for answers in fragments of bone, deep in caves where Neandertals once lived.

Against all odds, he pieced together the first genomes of our extinct relatives — revealing that their story is also our story. The blood of Neandertals and Denisovans runs in us still.

That discovery changed everything. Our origins are a tapestry of connections and adaptations. Pääbo showed that the past is not gone; it lives inside us, shaping how we face the future.

Explore his story

Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz
2022 NOMIS Awardee

The first spark of life • Developmental biology

How does life begin? What makes us human?
Can we safeguard life?

Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz has long been fascinated by the moment when something becomes someone. She asked: How does life begin?

Peering into the earliest hours after conception, she revealed the delicate choreography by which a tiny cluster of cells decides its fate — movements and choices that will shape an entire human being.

By modeling these beginnings, she showed how small changes can echo across a lifetime, offering hope for fertility treatments, regenerative medicine, and understanding developmental disorders.

Explore her story

Didier Fassin
2018 NOMIS Awardee

The value of life • Anthropology

What is justice? Why do inequalities persist?
What makes a life valuable?

Not all sparks are born in the laboratory. Didier Fassin’s spark was lit in the streets, in hospitals, in refugee camps — in the places where life is most fragile.

He asked: What makes a life valuable? Studying policing, health systems and humanitarian aid, he uncovered the moral choices hidden within everyday practices of power.

His work asks us to look again at justice, inequality and solidarity — not as abstractions, but as lived realities — and to ask ourselves, Can we do better?

Explore his story