The announcement of the 2006 Nobel laureates, which started this week, is the culmination of the science award season. The Nobel, the Lasker and other prestigious prizes have all been recently awarded and all honour achievements in science.
But there is a newer crop of less august, yet increasingly important, awards that value potential as much as past work. They highlight people who change the way science is done, and can be won by scientists at many different stages in their careers.
The European Union Contest for Young Scientists rewards undergraduate initiative and encourages young people to consider science as a viable profession. This year there are three winners of the 
5,000 (US$6,000) prize. One group created a system to de-ice aeroplanes; the second discovered a way to study the flight curves of table-tennis balls; and the third synthesized a potential beta blocker.
Winners of Nobels and Laskers are free to pursue blue-sky, hypothesis-driven research. But few younger, mid-career scientists have that option. The US National Institutes of Health's Pioneer Award changes that, by giving its recipients US$2.5 million over five years to pursue unconventional ideas that might not fare well in the traditional peer-review process.
Finally, mentors who help younger scientists to launch careers often don't get the honours they would have got if they had focused on their own. The UK National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts mentoring prize, co-sponsored by Nature, tries to redress the balance. It is known as the 'unsung hero' award and was created to highlight the methods of both senior and mid-career researchers who work hard on advancing their trainees' careers as much as their own.
Although scientists will always dream of Nobels, fantasizing about these other awards and creating similar ones could improve science for themselves and for future generations.