The 2020 MERAC Prize for the Best Early Career Researcher in New Technologies (Computational) is awarded to Dr Concepción Cárdenas Vázquez (Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Germany) for her leadership and creative work in instrumentation, from the conceptual design and the feasibility study to the final integration and verification, both in the laboratory and at the telescope, related to the instrument PANIC.

The 2020 MERAC Prize for the Best Early Career Researcher in Theoretical Astrophysics is awarded to Dr Aris Tritsis (Australian National University, Australia) for fundamental contributions to the physics of the interstellar medium and the process of star formation.

The 2020 MERAC Prize for the Best Early Career Researcher in Observational Astrophysics is awarded to Dr Jorryt Matthee (ETH Zürich, Switzerland) for spectacular results that have transformed the way we see and understand distant galaxies across time.