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Press release, 1 March 2007

New members from India, the United States and Finland join the International Selection Committee for the Millennium Technology Prize, the world's largest technology award

The Board of the Millennium Technology Foundation has appointed five new members to the eight-person International Selection Committee for the one million euro Millennium Technology Prize. Every second year, the prize is awarded to a technological innovation that has the potential for a positive impact on quality of life while also supporting sustainable development.

"Once the theoretical basis for a technology has been established and the innovation is moving to the exploitation phase, it should conform to the requirements of sustainable development and the values and demands of society. The inventions made by the first two winners of the Millennium Technology Prize have already had a significant impact on people's living conditions worldwide," said Professor Marja Makarow, who now chairs the International Selection Committee.

The Millennium Technology Prize has been awarded twice, in 2004 to Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, and in 2006 to Professor Shuji Nakamura, for his revolutionary development of bright-blue, green and white light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and a blue laser. Applications that have been developed using Professor Shuji Nakamura's new sources of light clearly indicate that technological innovations have an important role in reducing global energy consumption, providing environmentally-friendly and energy-efficient lighting in developing countries, and in the more efficient sterilisation of drinking water.

The name of the winner of the third Millennium Technology Prize will be announced in June 2008. The nomination period for the prize begins on 16th April 2007.

Members of the International Selection Committee

New members of the committee for 2007-2008 are Dr. Mikko Hupa, Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Technology at the Åbo Akademi University in Turku (Finland); Dr. Bob Iannucci, Senior Vice President and Head of Nokia Research Center (Finland); Dr. Risto Nieminen, Academy Professor at Helsinki University of Technology and Director of COMP, a National Center for Excellence in Computational Nanoscience (Finland); Dr. V. S. Ramamurthy, Homi Bhabha Chair Professor at the Inter-University Accelerator Center in New Delhi (India); and Dr. Henry T. Yang, Professor and Chancellor of the University of California, Santa Barbara (USA).

In addition to the committee's new chairperson, Dr. Marja Makarow, Professor of Applied Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and Vice-Rector of the University of Helsinki, members of the 2005-2006 committee who will continue to serve are Dr. Bengt Nordén, Professor of Physical Chemistry at Chalmers University of Technology, and Dr. Jean-Claude Charpentier, President of the European Federation of Chemical Engineering and Director of Research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).

The Millennium Technology Prize is intended to highlight innovations and research and development work that have a favorable impact on human quality of life and sustainable development. Established and funded by the Finnish private and public sectors in partnership, the world's largest technology award is supervised by the Millennium Technology Foundation in Helsinki.

Further information:

Millennium Prize Foundation
Dr. Tapio Alvesalo, Secretary General of the foundation and Secretary of the International Selection Committee, Tel: +358-400-341 497, E-mail: tapio.alvesalo@millenniumprize.fi

Additional information about the Millennium Technology Prize and biographies of members of the International Selection Committee can be found at: www.millenniumprize.fi

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