UPFronT Soiree

2019 Breakthrough Prize Awards Ceremony; 56 Philippine Tatler’s 2019 Best Restaurants’ Guide launch

In celebration of space, science, and the future, a group of talented entrepreneurs from the Generation T lists across Asia converged in Silicon Valley for a multi-day experience, where the climax of the weekend was the Breakthrough Prize awards ceremony. Silicon Valley’s most glamorous event, which is staged at a stunning venue at NASA’s Ames Research Centre, boasts a unique blend of personalities—such celebrities as host Pierce Brosnan, singer Lionel Richie, actors Julianne Moore, Orlando Bloom, Rachel McAdams, and Thandie Newton; and founders and CEOs of the biggest tech companies in the world, including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sergey Brin, and Uber’s Dara Khosrowshahi. Highlights of the evening included a special tribute to the late Stephen Hawking, a Breakthrough Prize laureate, by Eddie Redmayne, who played Hawking in the film The Theory of Everything, and a stunning performance by Chinese pop star GEM.

The true stars of the evening, however, were the Breakthrough Prize laureates. The winners of the world’s biggest cash prizes for life sciences, fundamental physics and mathematics represent, in the words of founder Yuri Milner, the “pinnacle of humanity’s intellectual achievement.” They are trailblazers whose work is driving human evolution by curing diseases, inventing new technologies, discovering answers to the universe’s mysteries and more. A special emotional tribute was paid to two of the winners of the life sciences award, Frank Bennett and Adrian Krainer, who developed a gene therapy drug to treat a deadly infant disease, spinal muscular atrophy. The parents of Emma Larson, a young patient the pair had successfully treated with their experimental drug, took to the stage to salute the doctors “who spent time away from their families so they could help ours.”