Science education often still work in silos and lacks inspiring, open and interdisciplinary programs. Benedikt and Oliver champion the concept of Open Innovation. They offer a different way of doing research to address urgent global challenges and developed a unique training strategy that empowers early-stage researchers to apply Open Innovation concepts directly into their projects. Embedding this training into neuroscience
research encouraged necessary competition, more disruptive research and better trained scientists. The jury approved this project because of their track record of already over 10 PhDs approaching neuroscientific research in novel ways, e.g. by including the roles of relatives and social networks in schizophrenia diagnosis.