Every year, we champion changemakers whose work is future-oriented, innovative, transformative, and sustainable. They are transforming classrooms, communities, and systems, evolving how we teach and learn to keep up with a rapidly changing world.

We're honored to recognize the 2025 Yidan Prize laureates for their work in advancing complex systems literacy and multilingual education.

Professor Uri Wilensky — 2025 Yidan Prize for Education Research

Mamadou Amadou Ly — 2025 Yidan Prize for Education Development

In a time of disinvestment in education, Uri and Mamadou’s work shows us the importance of novel ideas with the potential to scale, so more students can participate fully in learning and engage in society as global citizens. Though working in different contexts, they share many attributes: developing ideas that drive equity and inclusivity, sharing free and accessible resources, and rooting their work in what learners need to thrive.

Professor Uri Wilensky is a pioneer of agent-based modeling (ABM) — technology through which students can explore complex systems, grasp sophisticated concepts, and learn to think across perspectives and disciplines.

Forest fires have been on the rise and are frequently in the news. Climate scientists have found that forest fires have ‘tipping points’, whereby if the density of trees is below a critical threshold, the fire does not spread far, but above that threshold, the fire spreads rapidly through the whole forest. Using Uri's free, open-source NetLogo platform, learners create models like those forests and play with individual behaviors to explore how small actions become large-scale, non-linear patterns. They're investigating our multi-layered world using the same tool — and speaking the same modeling language — as advanced researchers across the natural and social sciences. His work, which he's also helped to embed in curricula around the world, is fostering a generation of collaborative, interdisciplinary thinkers ready to engage with our interconnected world.

Mamadou Ly is breaking down learning and language barriers for children in Senegal and other West African countries.

Here, school is taught in French — a language that more than 70% of Senegalese fourth graders don't speak or understand. With his team at Associates in Research and Education for Development (ARED) and in partnership with Senegal’s Ministry of Education, Mamadou developed a practical model to scale bilingual education, demonstrating the power of teaching children in their own languages, alongside the official language of their countries. ARED is also reshaping classroom culture with support from teachers, communities, and governments — shifting from traditional 'chalk and talk' methods to more flexible, engaging, inclusive environments. The organization widely shares its openly licensed materials, supporting similar programs in neighboring Gambia and Mauritania.

Uri and Mamadou will join a community of laureates in a spirit of global knowledge sharing and collaboration. By bringing together the people who show how change can be done and amplifying their voices, we become a lighthouse for all — illuminating the possibilities for our shared future.

Hear from the Chairman of our Judging Committee, Dr Koichiro Matsuura.

And learn more from our press release.