Concern over US travel visas prompts Ig Nobels to move its awards to Europe

The annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, a beloved celebration of unusual scientific achievements, will leave the United States for the first time in its 36-year history due to growing concerns about international travel restrictions. Organizers announced Monday that the satirical awards will be held in Zurich, Switzerland, marking a significant shift for the quirky scientific tradition.

Marc Abrahams, master of ceremonies and editor of the Annals of Improbable Research, the digital magazine behind the awards, cited safety concerns for international participants as the primary reason for the move.

“During the past year, it has become unsafe for our guests to visit the country,” Abrahams told The Associated Press. “We cannot in good conscience ask the new winners, or the international journalists who cover the event, to travel to the USA this year.”

The decision comes amid the current administration’s intensified immigration enforcement policies, which have targeted not only undocumented migrants but also holders of student and visitor exchange visas, creating uncertainty for international travelers.

The Ig Nobel Prizes, which honor scientific achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think,” have traditionally been held at prestigious U.S. institutions including Harvard University, MIT, and Boston University. The ceremony typically takes place in September, a few weeks before the actual Nobel Prizes are announced.

Last year’s ceremony highlighted the growing challenges for international participants when four of the ten winners declined to travel to Boston to receive their awards in person. Among those who did attend were researchers from Japan who investigated whether painting cows with zebra-like stripes would prevent fly bites, and a team from Africa and Europe that studied which types of pizza lizards preferred to eat.

Other noteworthy winners included European researchers who discovered that drinking alcohol sometimes improves a person’s ability to speak a foreign language, and a scientist who dedicated decades to studying fingernail growth.

The ceremony has developed beloved traditions over its three-and-a-half decades, including showering winners with paper airplanes during their acceptance speeches. These customs will now continue in Switzerland, where the event will be produced in collaboration with institutions of the ETH Domain, part of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and the University of Zurich.

“Switzerland has nurtured many unexpected good things — Albert Einstein’s physics, the world economy, and the cuckoo clock leap to mind — and is again helping the world appreciate improbable people and ideas,” Abrahams noted in his announcement.

The move has been welcomed by Milo Puhan, an epidemiologist at the University of Zurich and himself a 2017 Ig Nobel Prize winner. Puhan received the award for research demonstrating that “playing the didgeridoo trains the muscles and structures that keep the upper airways open, thereby reducing nighttime snoring and the severity of sleep apnea syndrome.”

“The Ig Nobel Prize makes research visible, and does so with a wink,” Puhan said, emphasizing the awards’ unique ability to highlight scientific work that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Looking ahead, organizers plan to hold the ceremony in Zurich every other year, with other European cities hosting the event in alternate years. The announcement notably included no immediate plans to return the ceremony to the United States, suggesting a long-term shift in the geographic focus of this internationally recognized scientific celebration.

The relocation represents another example of how changing immigration policies can impact international scientific collaboration and cultural exchange, even for events that celebrate the lighter side of academic achievement.