science

NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences

NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences rather than just read about it. In short: The NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences is a prize awarded by the National Academy of Sciences each year to a scientist at a United States institution for contributions to agriculture, or the understanding of the biology of an agriculturally important species. The award is presented to a single individual who must have received their Ph.D. no more than 20 years prior to the year of the award.

Key takeaways

NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences is a prize awarded by the National Academy of Sciences each year to a scientist at a United States institution for contributions to agriculture, or the understanding of the biology of an agriculturally important species. The award is presented to a single individual who must have received their Ph.D. no more than 20 years prior to the year of the award. The recipient receives a $100,000 prize and a medal.

History The existence of the prize was announced in 2016 in conjunction with the World Food Prize symposium. The National Academy of Sciences had previously had no award dedicated specifically to food and agricultural sciences, though scientists in these fields were eligible for awards in broader categories. The idea for the prize emerged from a conversation between several NAS members and Bill Gates at the 2013 NAS annual meeting, shortly after Gates and his wife received the Public Welfare Medal. The prize was designed to be comparable in prestige and value to other major awards in the field, particularly the Wolf Prize in Agriculture and the World Food Prize and was specifically intended to attract younger scientists to food and agricultural research. The NAS Council approved the concept in February 2014, and the prize was officially established in 2016 with a $3 million endowment funded equally by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR).

Eligibility The recipient of the prize must be employed at a U.S. institution and be mid-career, which, for the purposes of the prize, is defined as no more than 20 years since completion of the recipient's Ph.D. The prize specifically lists potential areas of science recipients might contribute to as including: Plant and Animal Sciences, Microbiology, Nutrition and Food Science, Soil Science, Entomology, Veterinary Medicine and Agricultural Economics. While the prize is typically awarded to a single individual, it may be shared by two or more individuals with approximately equal contributions to a collaborative accomplishment.

Laureates 2026 James Schnable, University of Nebraska–Lincoln 2025 Hans Coetzee, Kansas State University 2024 Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra, University of California, Davis 2023 Huaijun Zhou, University of California, Davis 2022 David Lobell, Stanford University 2021 Christina M. Grozinger, Pennsylvania State University 2020 Zachary Lippman, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory 2019 Elizabeth Ainsworth, USDA-ARS 2018 Rodolphe Barrangou, North Carolina State University 2017 Edward S. Buckler IV, USDA-ARS

See also List of National Academy of Sciences Awards List of agriculture awards

References

External links Official website

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences

In research: NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Agriculture awards, American science and technology awards, Awards established in 2016, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences in simple terms?

Why does NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences.