Marc Abrahams, editor of the humor science journal ‘Annals of Improbable Research’ that founded the Ig Nobel Prize, speaks at the 2026 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. Provided by Yonhap News.
This year’s Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to researchers who analyzed the nutritional components of cockroach “milk.” The Ig Nobel Prizes are often called the “oddball Nobel Prizes.”
The U.S. Harvard University humor science magazine ‘Annals of Improbable Research’, which organizes the Ig Nobel Prizes, announced on the 3rd (local time) that it had held the award ceremony in Zurich, Switzerland and presented Ig Nobel Prizes to 10 teams of researchers.
At the ceremony, wildly imaginative studies were showcased, including a scientific definition of a kiss and the use of a mosquito proboscis as a 3D printer nozzle.
● What is a kiss?
The motto of the Ig Nobel Prize is, “Research that first makes you laugh, then makes you think.” In line with this motto, this year’s winning studies go beyond being funny to carry deep meaning.
An international joint research team led by the University of Calcutta in India, with collaborators from the United States, Japan, France, and other countries, received the 2026 Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering that cockroach milk proteins contain three times more energy than cow’s milk proteins.
To analyze the components of cockroach milk, the team deployed cutting-edge equipment, including an X-ray free-electron laser. This research helps us understand how proteins in living organisms form crystals in the in vivo environment where they actually perform their functions.
The 2026 Ig Nobel Prize in Soil Science went to a plant and microbiology research team at the University of Zurich. The team sent 1,000 pairs of cotton underwear to 1,000 citizen scientists across Switzerland, asking them to bury the underwear in the ground and then dig them up two months later and send them back.
The citizen scientists also collected soil samples and entered location information and other data into an app. This experiment was conducted to establish cotton underwear as an easily usable indicator of soil health for anyone. As the experiment became known, citizen scientists in more than 25 countries around the world joined in.
A study that literally stepped on venomous snakes to find out why they bite humans earned the 2026 Ig Nobel Prize in Biology. Professor João Miguel Alves-Nunes and his team at the University of São Paulo in Brazil stepped on various parts of venomous snakes’ bodies for the experiments, varying both the temperature of the body part being stepped on and the time of day.
The team emphasized, “Investigating snake behavior related to snakebite incidents can help predict, and ultimately prevent, snakebites.”
The 2026 Ig Nobel Prize in Economics went to researchers who amassed evidence that people from upper social classes are more likely to engage in unethical behavior, such as snatching candy intended for children.
The 2026 Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to Tokujii Uno of Asahikawa Medical University in Japan for studying the aerodynamics of nose blowing.
The 2026 Ig Nobel Prize in Engineering went to researchers who pioneered a method of using mosquito proboscises as high-resolution 3D printing nozzles. The team named this method “necroprinting.”
The 2026 Ig Nobel Prize in Olfactory Science went to researchers who collected evidence that while babies smell very pleasant to their parents, teenage children do not.
A joint research team from the United States, Argentina, and Australia that revealed we value friends more when they treat people we dislike maliciously received the 2026 Ig Nobel Peace Prize.
The 2026 Ig Nobel Prize in Biomechanics went to researchers who provided a precise definition of a kiss. They defined a kiss as “a non-aggressive interaction between individuals of the same species, involving direct mouth-to-mouth contact in which some movement of the lips or oral apparatus is involved and there is no food transfer.” According to this definition, the team concluded that not only humans, but also ants, birds, polar bears, and others engage in kissing.
Matilda Brindle, a researcher at the University of Oxford in the UK who received the prize for this study, said, “I hope people don’t just find this research amusing, but also start to think a little differently about the place humans occupy in the animal kingdom.”
● Ig Nobel ceremony leaves a less free United States to roam the globe
This year’s Ig Nobel Prize ceremony was held outside Boston, in the United States, for the first time in 36 years. The change came because President Donald Trump’s immigration policies have become stricter, causing many laureates to encounter difficulties obtaining visas.
Tadd Truscott of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia, winner of the 2026 Ig Nobel Prize in Physics, told the international journal ‘Science’, “One of our students had a U.S. entry visa but was still kept waiting at immigration for 10 hours without water or food.” He won the prize for designing a urinal that prevents splashing.
Marc Abrahams, editor of ‘Annals of Improbable Research’ and founder of the Ig Nobel Prizes, said, “To preserve the character of the Ig Nobel Prizes, we had to move the ceremony to a more welcoming place.” He added, “Once we changed the venue, new energy flowed into the ceremony,” and told Science that it “feels just like when we first started the Ig Nobel Prizes.”
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