Digital Science Awards 2025 Catalyst Grants to Two Teams Visualizing the Future of Research

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The winning teams, both based in the United States, will use the funding to develop their ideas, which include visualizations that demonstrate research influence and impact. Their innovations are directly relevant to researchers, academic institutions, scholarly publishers, and funders.

The winning teams from Digital Science's 2025 Catalyst Grant round are:

• FigureTwo
• Pathfinder

FigureTwo

FigureTwo transforms static research figures into interactive, data-connected visuals - helping researchers, publishers, and institutions create and share figures that are FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable)-compliant, permanently citable, and mobile-ready, saving time while making scientific results more transparent, discoverable, and impactful.

Pathfinder

Pathfinder, from company Syntheos, maps how ideas spread across more than 100,000 research communities, showing how discoveries in one area influence progress in another. It automatically turns research data into easy-to-read maps and evidence-backed narratives that link directly to the original papers. This helps funders, institutions, and researchers clearly show where their work is making a difference, and spot new opportunities for future impact.

Jeff Lang, Founder and CEO of FigureTwo, says: "We're excited to be selected as one of this year's winners of the Digital Science Catalyst Grant. Being considered in the same company as past winners and successful innovators is a true honor, and a recognition of everything we've been working toward.

"We have so much to be excited for this coming year. Our full launch is coming in 2026, when users will be able to add interactive figures to publications, and archive them to meet funder mandates. We're also adding responsible AI automation to help turn research data into beautiful, accessible and interactive figures. This grant allows us to join the community infrastructure of scholarly communications by adding DOIs and long-term preservation."

Caleb Smith, Founder and CEO of Syntheos, says: "Pathfinder is a game-changer because it turns raw citation counts into traceable histories. Essentially, we're making the history of an idea visible, but more importantly, verifiable. Ultimately, our goal is simple: we want to make traceable, reproducible impact the new normal for science.

"The Catalyst Grant is critical for us because it's allowing us to invest more in the trust layer of the product. The goal is to move from a powerful prototype to a standard, so that when we say an impact exists, you know it will hold up under audit."

Digital Science CEO Dr Daniel Hook says: "Through our Catalyst Grants, Digital Science is proud to invest in novel innovations that have the potential to make a difference to individual researchers and the global research ecosystem alike. We congratulate the 2025 Catalyst Grant winners, who have impressed us with their unique approaches to critical issues faced in research, and their use of data visualizations to provide meaningful insights and outcomes for researchers, scholarly publishing, and funders."

Steve Scott, Director of Portfolio Development at Digital Science, says: "We expected that our 2025 theme of Data Visualization would result in some novel entries at the intersection of science, design and data - and our winners have more than risen to that challenge.

"FigureTwo stood out to us due to the team's deeply relevant publishing and product background, resulting in an elegant solution. Pathfinder brings a team with a deep bibliometrics and science-mapping pedigree, and a product that already aligns with our customers and products. It's exciting for us to invest into these teams, and we can't wait to see what they will produce in the year ahead."

See a video with comments from our new Digital Science Catalyst Grant winners: https://youtu.be/2Cq3s2MYWIc

About Catalyst Grant

The Digital Science Catalyst Grant is an international initiative to support innovation in new software tools and technologies, to advance research and create meaningful change.

The program supports and invests in early-stage ideas in the novel use of technology, with an award of up to £25,000 for the most promising ideas that aid research and further its impact on society.

The Catalyst Grant is awarded to innovative individuals or startups without the need for a complete business or development plan. Several previous Catalyst Grant winners have developed important products and solutions within Digital Science itself.

About Digital Science

Digital Science is an AI-focused technology company providing innovative solutions to complex challenges faced by researchers, universities, funders, industry, and publishers. We work in partnership to advance global research for the benefit of society. Through our brands - Altmetric, Dimensions, Figshare, IFI CLAIMS Patent Services, metaphacts, Overleaf, ReadCube, Symplectic, and Writefull - we believe when we solve problems together, we drive progress for all. Visit digital-science.com and follow Digital Science on Bluesky, on X or on LinkedIn.

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