UK, Swedish and Austrian entrepreneurs pick up EU's ICT 'Nobel Prize'
Three companies responsible for the development of a fixed-line phone service, an automatic scanner that digitises books in minutes, and a software translation system that avoids the need for reprogramming are the Grand Prize winners of the prestigious 2007 European Information and Communication Technology (ICT) awards. The prizes, each worth €200,000, were won by UK, Swedish and Austrian firms. 'Information and communications technology opens up a world of new possibilities - new ways of working and new ways of living,' said Viviane Reding, Information Society and Media Commissioner, as she awarded the prizes in Hannover, Germany. 'Innovations such as these are essential if Europe is to stay ahead in the global game. These prizes recognise European industries continuing capacity to develop and deploy state of the art ICT products,' she added. A further 17 prizes of €5,000 were awarded to ICT breakthroughs from five other countries. These ranged from virtual training for eye surgeons and Artificial Intelligence engines for games, to systems for translating thoughts into electrical signals and a search engine for 'invisible' web content. In all, Germany took home seven of the awards, France took four, Austria three, Sweden two, while Finland, Israel, Norway and the UK all won one each. The 20 prize winners were selected by the European Commission from a record number of 450 entries from 30 countries. Originally launched in 1995, the European ICT Prize awards ceremony took place for the first time at the CeBIT technology trade fair in Hannover, Germany. Funded under the European Commission's Framework Programme for Research, the European ICT Prize is the EU's 'Nobel Prize' for rewarding novel information and communication products and services with a high market potential. The judges are independent experts who recommend the winners and grand prize winners to the Commission. The Executive Jury was chaired this year by Professor Wolfgang Wahlster, CEO of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence and a Professor of Computer Science at Saarland University (Saarbrücken, Germany). The three Grand Prize Winners each receiving an award of �200,000 were: - Telepo's Business Communication Solution extends advanced voice and messaging for the mobile workforce by integrating mobile and fixed-line phone services for anytime, anywhere access, saving companies money and increasing their security; - Transitive Corporation's QuickTransit is a software 'translator' which allows applications created for one processor and operating system to run on another without any reprogramming; - Treventus Mechatronics' ScanRobot is an automatic scanner that digitises books at the rate of 40 pages per minute.