Puneet Varma (Editor)

Millennium Technology Prize

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Country
  
Finland

First awarded
  
2004

Reward(s)
  
€1 million

Awarded for
  
Life-enhancing technological innovation

Presented by
  
Technology Academy Finland

Official website
  
taf.fi/en/millennium-technology-prize/

The Millennium Technology Prize (Finnish: Millennium-teknologiapalkinto) is one of the world's largest technology prizes. It is awarded once every two years by Technology Academy Finland, an independent fund established by Finnish industry and the Finnish state in partnership. The prize is presented by the President of Finland. The Millennium Technology Prize is Finland's tribute to innovations for a better life. The aims of the prize are to promote technological research and Finland as a high-tech Nordic welfare state. The prize was inaugurated in 2004.

Contents

The Prize

The idea of the prize came originally from the Finnish academician Pekka Jauho, with American real estate investor and philanthropist Arthur J Collingsworth encouraging its establishment. The Prize celebrates innovations that have a favorable and sustainable impact on quality of life and well-being of people. The innovations also must have been applied in practice and stimulate further research and development. Compared to the Nobel Prize the Millennium Technology Prize is a technology award, whereas the Nobel Prize is a science award. Furthermore, the Nobel Prize is awarded for basic research, but the Millennium Technology Prize may be given to a recently conceived innovation which is still being developed. The Millennium Technology Prize is not intended as a reward for lifetime achievement.

The Millennium Technology Prize is awarded by Technology Academy Finland (formerly Millennium Prize Foundation and Finnish Technology Award Foundation), established in 2002 by eight Finnish organisations supporting technological development and innovation. The prize sum is 1 million euros (~US$1.3 million). The Millennium Technology Prize is awarded every second year and is presented by the president of Finland. The Millennium Technology Prize is the world's largest technology award. The predecessor to the Millennium Prize was the Walter Ahlström prize.

Universities, research institutes, national scientific and engineering academies and high-tech companies around the world are eligible to nominate individuals or groups for the award, excluding military technology. In accordance with the rules of the Technology Academy Finland, a proposal concerning the winner of the Millennium Technology Prize is made to the board of the foundation by the eight-member international selection committee, and the final decision on the prize winner is made by the board.

International Selection Committee

Current members of the selection committee:

  • Chairman Dr. Jarl-Thure Eriksson, Chancellor of Åbo Akademi University and former Rector of Tampere University of Technology (Finland)
  • Dr. Eva-Mari Aro, Professor in Molecular Plant Biology at University of Turku (Finland)
  • Dr. Jaakko Astola, Professor of Signal Processing at Tampere University of Technology (Finland)
  • Dr. Craig R. Barrett, Retired CEO/Chairman of the Board of Intel Corporation (United States)
  • Dr. Hans-Joachim Freund, Director at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society (Germany)
  • Dr. Riitta Hari, Director of both the multidisciplinary Brain Research Unit of the Low Temperature Laboratory at Aalto University and the national Center of Excellence on Systems (Finland)
  • Dr. Konrad Osterwalder, Former Rector of the United Nations University and Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations (Switzerland)
  • Dr. Ayao Tsuge, President of the Japan Federation of Engineering Society and President of Japan International Science and Technology Exchange Center (Japan)

    • References

    Millennium Technology Prize Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA