European IST Prize winners announced

Brussels, 30 Jun 2003

The 20 winners of the Commission sponsored European IST Prize have been selected from a total of 420 applications representing 28 countries, it was announced on June.

The projects, displaying cutting edge innovation in information society technologies (IST), come from France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. The culmination of the competition will be the announcement of the three Grand Prize winners during a ceremony at this year's IST 2003 event in Milan.

In announcing the winners, the European IST Prize organisers Euro-CASE said in a press release that 'the large number of applications and their high quality confirm the relevance of this Prize for stimulating innovation in European IST industry.'

The winners are chosen on the basis of four key selection criteria: technical excellence, innovative content, potential market value and capacity to generate new jobs. Along with a total prize fund of 700,000 euro, the three eventual Grand Prize winners will be able to look forward international recognition and high interest from investors.

This year's winning projects include Beyond Babel, from German company Linguatec, a multilingual conferencing and communication system that translates spoken input in one language into spoken output in other languages.

Israeli company Tadiran Spectralink are recognised for developing AMON, a wearable health system that automatically monitors and evaluates vital signs, and which is connected to monitoring medical centres via a cellular data link.

Appear Networks from Spain have developed Appear Provisioning Server 3.5, which enables the delivery of wireless applications to employees and public users of wireless networks deployed in venues such as airports, train stations or hospitals.

The only academic institution among the 20 winners, the University of Greenwich, was selected for EXODUS, computer software that simulates evacuations during emergencies, helping aircraft, building, and ship designers to save lives.

The three Grand Prize winners will be presented with their trophies by the EU Commissioner for Enterprise and the Information Society, Erkki Liikanen, and Italian Minister for Innovation and technologies, Lucio Stanca, in Milan on 2 October.

For further information, please consult the following web address:
http://europa.eu.int/information_society /istevent/2003/eistp/index_en.htm

CORDIS RTD-NEWS / © European Communities