Meet the 2025 Pritzker Environmental Genius Award Candidates #10–13
Building climate solutions from fungi, sediment, timber and uranium, four leaders under 40 show what next-generation innovation looks like in today’s world
What does environmental genius look like in 2025? Maybe it’s a frog sauna outside Sydney, a high-tech greenhouse in Appalachia or a furniture studio bringing back Kenya’s mangroves. The third set of nominees for this year’s Pritzker Award bring a patient, place-based lens across sectors and geographies. Their efforts go beyond fixing problems — they reimagine relationships between people, nature and infrastructure.
Anthony Waddle – Schmidt Science Fellow at Macquarie University
In Australia, endangered frogs face a threat that’s nearly invisible — but lethal. The chytrid fungus has wiped out species across the globe by infecting amphibians’ skin, disrupting basic life functions and often causing cardiac arrest. For conservation biologist Anthony Waddle, preventing extinction means confronting the disease at every level, from brick-and-plastic “frog saunas” to synthetic biology tools.
Waddle is a Schmidt Science Fellow at Macquarie University, where he leads applied research focused on protecting amphibians from chytrid in both captive and wild environments. One intervention — the frog sauna — creates small, passive thermal shelters that limit fungal outbreaks in winter. Another, now in use across Sydney in partnership with the New South Wales government, uses vaccines to help green and golden bell frogs survive exposure. So far, vaccinated frogs are more than twice as likely to survive annually, and the population has nearly tripled since the program began.
Longer term, Waddle’s team is developing gene-based interventions that may one day offer permanent resistance. His research is also informing experimental translocations, captive breeding plans and health monitoring tools — often in direct collaboration with government agencies, engineers and local community scientists. Whether building lab infrastructure or testing tools in the field, his work turns prototypes into lifelines that give at-risk frogs the chance to survive, reproduce and re-anchor their role in ecosystems.
Doris Wanjiru – Founder of Lamu Décor
In Kenya’s coastal belt, mangrove forests are disappearing at alarming rates — along with the biodiversity and livelihoods they support. Doris Wanjiru is working to reverse that. As founder of Lamu Décor, she’s building a regenerative design business that connects environmental restoration to economic empowerment.
Wanjiru’s model combines sustainable furniture production with AI-enabled biodiversity monitoring, replacing endangered mangrove logging with fast-regenerating mango wood and embedding “smart beehives” into mangrove zones to track pollinator health and ecosystem data. That information anchors community-led reforestation efforts while strengthening coastal resilience.
Lamu Décor operates as a distributed network of women-led micro-factories, training over 6,000 artisans and providing them with regenerative income streams, market access and design tools. The company’s “Each One, Teach One” program supports intergenerational skill-sharing, while zero-interest input loans and mobile platforms help extend production across rural communities. At its core, the business reframes furniture as a tool for ecological balance, cultural preservation and economic equality.
Under Wanjiru’s leadership, the company has reduced mangrove deforestation pressures by more than 80% in key regions, increased household incomes by up to 150% and proven that community-rooted, climate-positive design can compete in mainstream markets.
She envisions a future where locally made goods restore ecosystems, expand career autonomy for women and reshape sustainable development across Africa.
Viji Thomas – Co-founder and CEO of Sinkco Labs
Coastal restoration and carbon removal are typically treated as separate efforts. Viji Thomas is designing a solution that does both — swiftly, permanently and at scale.
Thomas is the co-founder and CEO of Sinkco Labs, a climate biotech company developing a new method for locking carbon deep in marine sediment. The process involves injecting carbon-rich biomass into the seafloor in a way that avoids surface disruption. It’s an alternative to dredging — the standard method for erosion control — which often damages ecosystems, generates emissions and costs more to maintain. With a background in bioprocess engineering and nearly a decade in sustainability consulting, Thomas is positioning Sinkco as a faster, lower-cost option that protects coastlines and removes carbon in the same step.
The company is piloting projects along the Gulf Coast, including one in Mississippi where an entire town had to relocate due to disappearing land. Thomas says that experience reshaped his understanding of the work — making it about people, not just climate metrics. His goal is to turn coastal loss into a global carbon sink, and to build public models where states can fund restoration through a share of the carbon credits.
A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and BMW Responsible Leader, Thomas was nominated for confronting two urgent climate crises — vanishing coastlines and excess carbon — with one multidisciplinary solution.
Jonathan Webb – Co-founder and CEO of The Nuclear Company
Jonathan Webb is building large-scale nuclear infrastructure to meet America’s surging energy demand. As co-founder and CEO of The Nuclear Company, he’s taking on a sector that has seen stalled growth for decades — and showing that proven nuclear designs, built at fleet scale, can deliver clean, reliable power fast enough to meet the country’s needs.
The company has raised over $70 million since its launch in 2023 and is developing AI-based tools to make nuclear construction more efficient. Its approach pairs licensed reactor technology with a design-once, build-many strategy — a model meant to reverse the industry’s longstanding track record of cost overruns and delays.
Webb previously founded AppHarvest, a high-tech greenhouse company in Appalachia that brought $1.5 billion in investment to the region and built one of the largest indoor farming operations in U.S. history. Earlier in his career, he helped the Department of Defense develop on-site renewable energy projects for military installations.
His expertise blends clean infrastructure, venture execution and community engagement — and his companies have prioritized investment in regions affected by the decline of coal and manufacturing. In 2024, The Nuclear Company completed a seven-state public education tour to build relationships with frontline communities who will be central to the success of nuclear power.
For Webb, energy is both a climate solution and a foundation for economic stability. His goal is to power the country’s next wave of electrification — from domestic manufacturing to data centers — while creating thousands of jobs in places where they’re needed.
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