[1] Every year, three Buchalter Prizes are awarded in recognition of ground-breaking work in cosmology with the potential to produce a breakthrough advance in our understanding of how the Universe works, particularly by substantially extending or challenging currently-accepted models.
The composition of advisory board and Judging Panel is changed periodically.
Current members of the advisory board are David Helfand and Marc Kamionkowski, whereas current members of the Judging Panel are Claudia de Rham, Matthew Johnson, and Justin Khoury.
[9] The prize was conceived by Dr. Ari Buchalter, a former astrophysicist turned entrepreneur who earned his PhD from Columbia University in 1999 working with David Helfand, on the premise that there are fundamental gaps in our understanding of cosmology, and that several currently-accepted paradigms might be incomplete or incorrect.
The prize was created to support the development of new boundary-pushing ideas or discoveries that have the potential to produce a breakthrough advance beyond our present understanding of the Universe.