Parijs, 16 maart 2007 - Drie Europese bedrijven zijn uitgeroepen als Grand Prize winnaar van de European Information and Communication Technology Prize 2007 (European ICT Prize). De drie winnende bedrijven zijn Telepo (Zweden), Transitive (Verenigd Koninkrijk) en Treventus (Oostenrijk). De drie winnaars ontvingen de European ICT Grand Prize, ter waarde van EUR200.000, uit handen van Eurocommissaris Viviane Reding tijdens de officiële prijsuitreiking op CeBIT te Hannover.
In totaal 450 deelnemers uit 30 verschillende landen namen deel aan de European ICT Prize 2007.
Voor meer informatie over de finalisten:
www.ict-prize.orgZie ook het volledige, Engelstalige persbericht hieronder.
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British, Swedish and Austrian entrepreneurs win the EU's "Nobel prize" for ICT
Brussels, 16 March 2007
A communications solution that offers businesses access to fixed-line phone services anytime, anywhere, 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 European Information and Communication Technology (ICT) awards for 2007. These three Grand Prizes, worth EUR200,000 each, were won by British, Swedish and Austrian firms. Seventeen more prizes, of EUR5,000 each, were awarded to ground-breaking technologies from five other countries. The 20 prize winners were selected by the European Commission from a record number of 450 applicants, from 30 countries.
"Information and communications technology opens up a world of new possibilities - new ways of working and new ways of living," said Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding as she awarded the prizes in Hannover. "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."
For the first time the European ICT Prize awards ceremony took place at CeBIT, the world's largest ICT trade fair in Hannover, Germany. The three Grand Prize Winners (of equal merit) each receiving an award of EUR200,000 are:
* Telepo's Business Communication Solution: for extending advanced voice and messaging for the mobile workforce by integrating mobile and fixed-line communications. Telepo, based in Stockholm Sweden, has offices in Finland and Australia.
* Transitive Corporation's QuickTransit: for software translation without source code or binary code changes. Transitive, founded in 2000, has its headquarters in Los Gatos, California and a research and development team in Manchester, UK.
* Treventus Mechatronics' ScanRobot(tm): for lowering costs and increasing speed for digital library creation through automatic distortion-free book scanning. Treventus, founded in 2006, is a spin-off of the Vienna University of Technology and is based in Austria.
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About the European ICT Prize
The European ICT Prize, the EU's own "Nobel Prize" for innovation in information and communication technologies, is funded by the European Commission's Framework Programme for Research (see IP/06/1590). Since 1995 this has been organised every year by the Commission together with the European Council of Applied Sciences, Technologies and Engineering (Euro-CASE). 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 of Germany.
For further details of the winners and background on the prize itself see:
http://www.ict-prize.org/.
For the 2006 and 2005 winners see IP/06/365 and IP/05/491.