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Innovating Healthcare: $33 Million Breakthrough Prize Announced

Posted by on 23 February 2013
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Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin and Yuri Milner have teamed up to create the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Foundation, which now offers the most lucrative annual prize in the history of science: A $33 million pot to be split among 11 people, with individual rewards worth $3 million apiece. By comparison, the monetary value of the Nobel prize is just $1.1 million.


The foundation announced the first 11 winners of the award on Wednesday. They will then be asked to help choose the recipients for future prizes.


"Our society needs more heroes who are scientists, researchers and engineers," Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page on Wednesday. "We need to celebrate and reward the people who cure diseases, expand our understanding of humanity and work to improve people's lives."


The Facebook founder, Google co-founder and prominent venture capitalist, respectively, hope this prize will re-energize the medical field to continue their endeavors to research and battle cancer, Parkinson's disease and diabetes, among other medical maladies. Read more here.

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