The EU FET Open Boostcrop consortium, led by Prof Vas Stavros (University of Birmingham) were awarded a Faraday Horizon Prize by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) for “boosting crop growth using natural product and synthesis enabled solar harvesting.” RSC Faraday Horizon Prizes recognise significant recent novel discoveries or advances made in the area of physical chemistry by groups or teams.

The Boostcrop team was comprised of 6 EU and 2 UK institutions spanning academia (chemistry/biology) and industry (synthesis/agriculture), including Bristol colleagues Kerry Franklin and Chris Groves from Biological Sciences. Daniel Polak (former post-doc in the Oliver group now at Leicester), Mike Ashfold (Emeritus Professor) and Tom were all members of the Boostcrop team, and share part of the 2025 Faraday Horizon prize.