26.10.2009

MILLENNIUM TECHNOLOGY PRIZE WINNERS SEEK NEW SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGHS

The three winners of the Millennium Technology Prize talked about their current research at a technology symposium held in the Finnish Embassy in Washington.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, winner of the first-ever Millennium Technology Prize in 2004 and inventor of World Wide Web, is quite satisfied with his achievement. At the Washington event, when asked what he would have done differently, he smiled and said he would perhaps leave out the "//", the double forward slash that follows "http:" in web addresses.

Shuji Nakamura, winner of the 2006 Millennium Technology Prize and the inventor of blue and white LEDs, has good reason to feel proud. In the USA, where almost 25% of the electrical power generated is used for lighting, a wave of energy-efficient LED light fittings is reaching the market. New LED TVs, Blu-ray® players and many other new gadgets are based on Professor Nakamura's innovative new sources of light. Working with his team of researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), Professor Nakamura is now focusing on improving the energy efficiency of LED lighting and developing a green laser diode."A Japanese company has created a green laser diode using our technology. As red, blue and green laser diodes are now available, we can develop small projectors installed in mobile phones, or laser TVs with very beautiful colours," said Nakamura.

Robert Langer, who won the Millennium Technology Prize in 2008, is known, inter alia, for his extensive and very productive work in the field of tissue engineering. Steve Lohr, a reporter from The New York Times and host of the Washington event, presented the audience with an astonishing list of the MIT professor's achievements.
"Bob Langer is an inventor, an entrepreneur and a scientist. He's worked on everything from drug delivery to tissue engineering, and he's had an impact on illnesses ranging from cancer to heart disease. He also holds 700 patents..." And those were just the items at the top of the list.

Led by Robert Langer, MIT's Langer Lab is the world's largest biomedical engineering laboratory. One of the projects being carried out by his research team involves searching for new ways to transport drugs into human cells. Nanoparticles, for example, are a potential candidate for executing this task, in which the target is cancer cells, not healthy ones. "So many exciting new things are going on around the world right now. The future of nanotechnology is both exciting and bright," he said.

All three winners have continued their scientific work after being awarded the Millennium Technology Prize. Even though the 20th anniversary of the World Wide Web has just been celebrated, only 20 per cent of the world has access to the Internet. Sir Tim, Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (he was knighted for his achievements), is looking forward to the time when the rest of the world logs on. As an advocate for net neutrality and openness on the Internet, he is particularly excited about making more governmental data available on the Web. In his opinion, liberating data relating to traffic, weather and public safety fuels new innovations. "2009 has been the year of pushing to get data held by governments onto the web," he said.

"All three winners beautifully demonstrate the primary principle behind the work we are doing at the Technology Academy Foundation through the Millennium Technology Prize. The prize is not awarded to an invention but to an innovation - an invention which has been proven to work and to be good for humanity. Your innovations are clear proof of this," said Stig Gustavson, Chairman of the Board, Technology Academy Foundation.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Shuji Nakamura and Robert Langer were interviewed on stage by New York Times technology reporter Steve Lohr at the technology symposium held in the Embassy of Finland in Washington on 8th October 2009. A recorded webcast from the event is available at http://www.livestream.com/technologyacademyfoundationfinland