The Balzan Foundation collects scientific contributions, and dissertations from its prizewinners for periodic publications. The Balzan Papers journal has been digital since 2024, and here, some updates on the research projects of the Balzan prizewinners are also gathered.
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recent papers
Jeffrey I. Gordon
An update on Gordon’s project to develop culturally acceptable, affordable, and scalable treatments for undernourished Bangladeshi children. His team has revealed a causal link between gut microbiome development, systems physiology and healthy growth.
Originally set to end in 2022, Eva Kondorosi’s Balzan Research Project continues to support students through training, mentoring, and scholarships. It also helps young researchers attend conferences, give lectures, and conduct fieldwork.
Technology to remove excess CO2 from the atmosphere is now available. Senne Starckx describes two methods in use, direct air capture (DAC) and metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), the latter earning Omar Yaghi the 2024 Balzan Prize and a share of the 2025 Nobel Prize.
David Damrosch
Considering literary ecology as an ecosystem that has evolved over two centuries, Damrosch examines its connection with ecology and evolutionary theory, going back to the origins of the disciplines of comparative philology and comparative literature.
Marco Ferrari
How many species of humans were there in prehistoric times? In tackling this question, Ferrari presents theories of human evolution, showing that we, Homo sapiens, are unique and alone – the last survivors of an evolutionary “bush” that once had a wealth of species.
Michaël Gillon
An update on Gillon’s Balzan Project, a major contribution to the success of SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing UltracOOl Stars) and to the study of the diversity of rocky exoplanets orbiting very low-mass stars and their potential habitability.
