New committee members appointed

New members have joined the International Selection committee of the world's largest technology award, the Millennium Technology Prize.

Five new members from India, the United States and Finland have been appointed to the eight-person International Selection Committee for the one million euro Millennium Technology Prize.

New members of the committee for 2007-2008 are Dr Mikko Hupa, Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Technology at the Ã…bo 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 centre 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).

Every second year, the prize is awarded to a technological innovation that has the potential for a positive impact on quality of life whilst also supporting sustainable development. It is intended to highlight innovations and research and development work that have a favourable impact on human quality of life and sustainable development.

The 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 development of bright-blue, green and white light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and a blue laser.

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 16 April 2007.

The award was established and is funded by the Finnish private and public sector. It is the world's largest technology award and is supervised by the Millennium Technology Foundation in Helsinki.