Organizers of the humorous Ig Nobel prize have revealed that this year’s awards ceremony will occur in Switzerland, departing from its long-standing location in the US since the prize’s inception in 1991. The rationale behind this decision stems from concerns regarding US travel visas for participants, particularly as the Trump administration halts visa processing for individuals from 75 nations, which includes countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe.
Marc Abrahams, the founder of the awards, informed the Associated Press that it has now become ‘unsafe for our guests to visit’ the US. ‘We cannot, in good conscience, request the new winners or the international journalists covering the event to travel to the US this year,’ he stated.
Abrahams mentioned that the award ceremony is planned to occur in Zurich every other year, with various European nations hosting the prize-giving event in the intervening years.
The Ig Nobel prizes, which encompass 10 different categories ranging from chemistry to peace to nutrition, ‘celebrate accomplishments that initially make people laugh, and subsequently make them think.’
Last year’s Ig Nobel prize for chemistry was awarded to a trio of researchers who proposed a ‘Teflon diet’, in which non-stick polymers like polytetrafluoroethylene serve as a calorie-free filler to bulk out food. Previous awards have also been conferred for discovering why scientists enjoy licking rocks, examining the scents emitted by cinema audiences, and employing ‘drunk’ worms as analogues for large polymers.
Typically, the award ceremony occurs in September each year at Harvard University in the US, although the event transitioned online during the Covid-19 pandemic. Abrahams indicated that this year’s event will involve the University of Zurich and institutions within the ETH domain, which is part of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. He further noted that there are currently no immediate plans to reinstate the ceremony in the US.