In 1714, the original Longitude Prize solved the problem of accurately determining longitude at sea, saving lives, and transforming the world. Today, we face a challenge just as urgent — and this Prize has the potential to be just as world-changing for those affected by motor neurone disease (MND).
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is the most common form of MND. It steals movement, speech, and life itself. But with the right data, the right tools, and the right incentives, we believe we can change that story and demonstrate the potential for harnessing AI to develop a treatment for this disease.
That is why I’m thrilled to help unveil the third modern Longitude Prize.
The Longitude Prize on ALS officially launched today at the Festival of Genomics in Boston, US, and at the London Museum Spaces in the UK, marking the start of a new chapter in our mission to harness innovation to solve humanity’s toughest challenges.
This announcement follows a landmark year for Longitude Prizes. We recently celebrated the achievement of Sysmex Astrego, winner of the Longitude Prize on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR), in the Science Museum, which can be seen in Medicine: Wellcome Galleries.
We have also reached the finalist stage of the Longitude Prize on Dementia, with the winner to be announced in Spring 2026. These milestones underscore the power of challenge prizes to make progress where traditional approaches have failed. Now, we turn toward finding treatments for ALS.
This moment is deeply personal. In 2021, the Science Museum acquired the contents of Professor Stephen Hawking’s Cambridge office — a once-in-a-lifetime acquisition offering an intimate glimpse into the mind of one of history’s greatest physicists. In writing about this in a book for the museum, Stephen Hawking: Genius at Work, I was immersed in his papers, ephemera, and the eclectic objects that surrounded him.
Behind the brilliance was sobering truth, evident from his wheelchairs, his sofa-cum-hospital bed and voice synthesizer: Hawking’s genius thrived despite a diagnosis of ALS when he was only 21 years old.
Yet Hawking lived many decades with ALS — a rare exception when it comes to a relentless disease that typically shortens life dramatically. His story is a testament to human resilience, but also a stark reminder: ALS is still untreatable. Tomorrow’s breakthroughs cannot come soon enough.
Lucy Hawking, journalist and daughter, commented: ‘My father lived with MND for over 50 years, the longest known survivor with this condition and his great wish was that one day, a cure would be found. I’m proud to support the Longitude Prize and wish all entrants the very best.’
The Longitude Prize on ALS is a £7.5 million, five-year global challenge principally funded by the MND Association, and designed and delivered by Challenge Works, supported by Nesta. Additional funders include Nesta, the Alan Davidson Foundation, My Name’5 Doddie Foundation, LifeArc, FightMND, The 10,000 Brains Project, Answer ALS, and The Packard Center at Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, Maryland. It aims to harness the power of artificial intelligence to accelerate drug discovery for the treatment of ALS.
The prize comes at a time when there is new hope, said Tris Dyson, Managing Director at Challenge Works who was diagnosed with ALS in 2023: ‘In the last year, Tofersen, the first drug treatment to show real promise for people with the very rare inherited form of MND (affecting around 2% of patients), shows that the disease is no longer a black box that we cannot penetrate. We are now on the right path for treatments for all MND patients – including those of us living with ALS. The real game changer though is the rapid advancement of AI. It means we can turn the path into a superhighway.’
At its heart, this Longitude Prize recognises how biomedical science is being transformed by AI. Perhaps the best-known example is AlphaFold, developed by Google DeepMind to work out three-dimensional structure of proteins from their amino acid sequence. This allows researchers to understand how proteins fold and interact, which is crucial for various fields, notably drug discovery. The developers of AlphaFold, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, were awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this work and it is time to bring that same cutting-edge ambition to ALS.
But AI alone isn’t enough. To train AI requires well curated data — vast, high-quality, and accessible. Until now, ALS research has been hampered by fragmented, siloed datasets, restrictive access, and incompatible formats. This has stifled collaboration and slowed discovery.
We owe a debt to campaigners — from Doddie Weir and Rob Burrow to the millions who took part in the Ice Bucket Challenge. Their efforts have not only raised vital funds but have put ALS in the global spotlight and helped generate a rich trove of data that could transform research — if we can unlock it.
Through Challenge Works, supported by Nesta, we’ve convened a global coalition of charities, tech companies, and academic institutions to build one of the largest, most comprehensive ALS datasets ever assembled.
This data-rich ecosystem will be the foundation of the Prize. Over five years, £7.5 million in staged funding will support multidisciplinary teams that unite biomedical researchers with AI and data science experts. Their mission: use AI to mine the data and pinpoint the most promising drug targets for ALS treatments. 
But this is more than a competition. It is part of a wider drive to foster openness, collaboration, and innovation — ensuring that discoveries are shared, scaled, and ultimately translated into treatments that can extend and improve lives. Tanya Curry, Chief Executive at the Motor Neurone Disease Association, described how by empowering some of the brightest minds across science and technology, the Longitude Prize on ALS “will initiate transformative change for people living with motor neurone disease.”
And while ALS is our focus, the implications could be far broader. By proving how AI can unlock new treatments in neurodegeneration, this Prize could catalyse advances in treating frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s. The ripple effects could reshape the future of brain health.
As with all Longitude Prizes, this is a collective effort. I extend my thanks to everyone who has contributed so far — especially the individuals and organisations who have helped shape this Prize.
Let the challenge begin.