The Academy Award For Science You’ve Never Heard Of

The 2023 Scientific and Technical Awards at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on February 23, 2024. Credit: Richard Harbaugh / © A.M.P.A.S

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The Academy Awards, or the Oscars, honor the film stars and production teams that make the movies a magical place where we come to laugh, to cry, to care. But the Oscars aren’t the only awards ceremony hosted by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

A separate ceremony called the Scientific and Technical Awards, or the Sci-Tech Awards, usually takes place the month before the Oscars. It honors technical contributions to the process of making films.

The awards started as a scientific or technical achievement category at the 1931 Oscars. That year, noise-reducing sound recording equipment and super-sensitive film won the first Sci-Tech prizes. Decades later, the Sci-Tech Awards became its own ceremony, expanding to recognize scientific and engineering achievements and technical achievements as separate categories. Recent winning innovations range from a 100-foot-long “rain bar” that dumps realistic-looking rain on actors, to digital wardrobe technology that simulates clothes on virtual human models, kind of like the computerized closet system from “Clueless.”

Due to the California wildfires, the Academy has pushed the 2025 Sci-Tech Awards ceremony to April 29, but they’ve already announced the full list of winners. Many were recognized for fine-tuning existing technologies, like 3D animation or steadycams, but one innovation stood out this year: an invention that uses science to help stunt professionals set people on fire.

Introducing: Naked Burn Gel

When Neeme Vaino heard that he had won a Sci-Tech Award, “I could barely  walk,” he says.

In the mid-2010s, Vaino, a longtime fire stunt product designer, was asked to address an annoying problem. Because realistic-looking fire is hard to replicate using CGI, production teams often use real fire on set, carefully engulfing objects and stunt performers in flames. Stunt professionals need cumbersome layers of protective clothing to pull off these fiery tricks, and that limits productions to only doing fully clothed fire stunts.

In 2015, Vaino came up with a solution—a system of two gooey, clear gels that, when put together, could safely be set ablaze on bare skin. Called FireSkin360 Naked Burn Gel, it works by applying one gel layer that protects the skin, then another on top that emits flammable vapors that can be ignited without burning the actor. As the top layer burns, it simultaneously releases carbon dioxide that accumulates and makes the flame easier to put out. The burn can last for about one minute—much longer than typical fire stunt scenes, which usually only last a few seconds.

“There was a need for it,” Vaino says, adding that he collected several blisters in the early stages of creating the formula. Much of the development process involved tweaking the protective and flammable layers so they would stick together on human skin, and not slide around. The system also includes a dispenser that releases an even layer of the burning gel to create a consistent, long-lasting burn.

FireSkin360 Naked Burn Gel has been featured in movies and TV shows, including “Vikings: Valhalla” and “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.”

Another gel that burns on bare skin was also given a Technical Achievement Award this year, but Vaino’s is the only one that’s sold commercially to both production teams and fire artists. He hopes it could one day have applications beyond the silver screen as researchers develop gels that help protect buildings from wildfires.

“ It’s suitable mainly for films,” Vaino says, “but I don’t know, maybe somebody will find good use for it elsewhere.”

After the ceremony takes place, you can check out highlights from the 2025 Sci-Tech Awards on the Oscars YouTube page.

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Emma Lee Gometz

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Emma Lee Gometz is Science Friday’s Digital Producer of Engagement. She’s a writer and illustrator who loves drawing primates and tending to her coping mechanisms like G-d to the garden of Eden.

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