Winners of this year’s Onassis Prize for shipping have pledged to donate part of their joint $200,000 winnings to fund student scholarships and academic research into ports and shipping.
Professor Mary Brooks and Professor Wayne Talley made a commitment to support new students as they received their awards at a ceremonial dinner in London’s Guildhall last night.
Professor Brooks from Dalhousie University in Canada said she would support student scholarships, while Professor Talley of Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, committed to back a new doctoral post.
“There is currently no PhD in maritime business in the US,” Prof Talley said as he accepted his award from Kitack Lim, secretary-general of the International Maritime Organisation.
“This award will be a platform for the establishment of a platform for the first PhD in the US. This is truly an honour.”
As the first woman to win an Onassis award, Prof Brooks was honoured for her work on competition policy in liner shipping, port strategic management and short sea shipping in the Americas.
Prof Talley has a long track record in research into the shipping supply chain and ports.
The Onassis prizes in shipping, alongside others for international trade and finance, were set up in 2007, by the Onassis Foundation and the University of London’s Cass Business School.
Awarded every three years, they aim to highlight academic study into key business areas.
“The aim is to establish these prizes as the Nobel prizes of the City of London, in areas or relevance to it and which the Nobel Prizes do not cover,” said Professor Sir Paul Curran, president of the institution.
Anthony Papadimitriou, president of the Onassis Foundation, said the aim of the awards was to spread the aims of the foundation to help society realise its potential.
In an aside, he added that the fleet now managed by Onassis’ Olympic Maritime is “larger, newer and more valuable” than the fleet bequeathed to the foundation when it was set up 43 years ago.
This year's Onassis Prize for International Trade was shared between Professor Jonathan Eaton and Professor Samuel Kortum.
Over the past two decades, they have collaborated to develop a model of international trade which integrates geographical factors into traditional understanding of comparative advantage.
Winner of the Onassis Prize in Finance was Professor Douglas Diamond, of the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago.
