ESET Science Award ročník 2025

The laureates of the ESET Science Award 2025 were decided by an international jury headed by Nobel Laureate Edvard Moser. In the category of Outstanding Scientist in Slovakia, the award went to economist Martin Kahanec. The laureate of the category Outstanding Scientist in Slovakia under the age of 35 is the philosopher Daniela Vacek and the Outstanding Academic is the chemist Ľubomír Švorc. The Public vote went to neurologist Zuzana Gdovinová.

This year, the Outstanding Scientist in Slovakia was the economist Martin Kahanec. He is the first laureate from the field of humanities and social sciences to be included in this year's award. Martin Kahanec is a professor at the Central European University in Vienna, the University of Economics in Bratislava and is also the founder and director of the Central European Institute for Labour Research. He has a long-standing interest in how the labour market participation of vulnerable groups is changing and the impact of public policies on their living conditions. Together with his team, he has developed a methodology for calculating a decent wage, which is used worldwide and provides a basis for the implementation of policies by the European Commission, the United Nations, social partners as well as large employers.

In the category of Outstanding Scientist under the age of 35, the award went to Daniela Vacek, a philosopher focusing on the ethics of artificial intelligence. She works at the Department of Analytical Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, v.v.i, and partly at the Department of Logic and Methodology of Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Comenius University in Bratislava, as well as at the Kempelen Institute for Intelligent Technologies. Her research focuses on questions of responsibility for the positive and negative impact of artificial intelligence, which have become an urgent challenge for the international scientific community in recent years. The award in the category of Outstanding Academic went to Ľubomír Švorc from the Institute of Analytical Chemistry at the Faculty of Chemical and Food Technology of the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, where he leads the Laboratory of Modern Electroanalytical Methods. Together with his students, he develops new approaches for the determination of biologically active substances using advanced electrochemical sensors. The winner of the Public vote was neurologist Zuzana Gdovinová, who has devoted her entire professional life to the research and treatment of strokes.