The winners of the 7th edition of the ESET Science Award have been announced — and for the first time, the award was open to all scientific disciplines.
An international committee chaired by Norwegian neuroscientist and Nobel laureate Edvard Moser selected the winners, evaluating not only the scientific quality of their work but also its contribution to society.
First ever
Economist Martin Kahanec became the first laureate of the main category — Outstanding Scientist in Slovakia — whose background lies in the humanities and social sciences.
Kahanec is a professor at the Central European University in Vienna and the University of Economics in Bratislava. He is also co-founder and scientific director of the Central European Labour Studies Institute (CELSI).
This year has been especially notable for Kahanec. He was elected to the Board of Trustees of Academia Europaea and appointed its Vice-President — a major step for Slovak representation in this pan-European academy of sciences. Later, he became the first Slovak to join the European Commission’s Group of Chief Scientific Advisors (GCSA), which provides independent expert guidance to EU policymakers.
According to the global research database RePEc, Kahanec ranks among the top 9 percent of economists in Europe and is Slovakia’s most productive researcher in terms of academic output. His work focuses on labour markets, migration, and economic policy.
Ethics of AI
Philosopher Daniela Vacek received the Outstanding Scientist Under 35 award for her research on the ethics of artificial intelligence. She works at the Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, the Department of Logic and Methodology of Sciences at Comenius University’s Faculty of Arts, and the Kempelen Institute for Intelligent Technologies.
The winner of the Outstanding Higher Education Scientist category is Ľubomír Švorc from the Faculty of Chemical and Food Technology at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava. Together with his students, he develops new methods for identifying biologically active substances using advanced electrochemical sensors.
Finally, neurologist Zuzana Gdovinová, who studies strokes, won the People’s Choice Award.
