Millennium Prize winner Professor Robert Langer and Millennium Prize Laureate Dr Andrew Viterbi presented at the Spinverse Millennium Prize Symposium
On the 10th of June, 2008 Spinverse Ltd, a sponsor and a coordinating partner of the Millennium Week arranged in cooperation with Tekes FinNano, Functional Materials and VAMOS Programmes the Millennium Prize Symposium. The key speakers were two Millennium Prize Laureates: Professor Robert Langer, MIT and Dr Andrew Viterbi Presidential Chair Professor, University of Southern California and President, Viterbi Group LLC.
According to the Millennium Prize website “Dr. Langer has been cited as ‘one of history's most prolific inventors in medicine’. He holds 380 patents, has published 680 articles and 13 books, has licensed products to about 80 companies, and is known as the father of controlled drug delivery and tissue engineering. Dr. Robert Langer has discovered and developed many advanced drug delivery systems that have had a significant impact on fighting cancer, heart disease, mental health illnesses and numerous other diseases."
Dr Viterbi has an academic background at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he graduated as the Master of Electrical Engineering and at the University of Southern California where he completed his Ph.D. While teaching digital communications and information theory at the UCLA School of Engineering and Applied Science he came up with the Viterbi algorithm, which enables sending digital signals over long distances or otherwise challenging conditions and can be found in portable devices like mobile phones.
In the Symposium Professor Langer gave a fascinating talk on "The invention and development of innovative biomaterials for controlled drug release and other applications". In his talk he described how three of his research ideas had generated seminal papers in top journals, what had become of the invention once patented and how these patents had, with the help of venture investments, generated multimillion dollar companies. Especially interesting was his lively recollection of how rocky the road to his first patent was.
After a short break, the focus turned to telecommunication with Dr Andrew Viterbi giving a talk on “Science, Technology and Business of Digital Communication”. He reviewed the scientific and technological developments behind his innovation and the business applications it made possible. In his opinion digital communication’s (which in large scale is enabled by Viterbi’s work) greatest contribution to humanity is its ability to serve the entire planet and thus “level the playing field”.
In addition to Dr Viterbi’s presentation the seminar featured three top-tier Finnish ICT companies: Envault, Luxdyne and Xtract.
Over 100 people attended the Symposium, including around twenty representatives of the international press visiting Finland during the Millennium Week.
Dr. Langer was announced The Winner of the Millennium Technology Prize, the world’s biggest technology prize, on June 11th at the Finlandia Hall, Helsinki. Other Laureates were Dr. Sir Alec Jeffreys on his invention of DNA fingerprinting in the area of genetics, Professor Emmanuel Desurvire, Dr Randy Giles and Professor David N. Payne on their invention of the erbium-doped fibre amplifier for global high-capacity optical fiber network.
More information about Millennium Technology Prize, please contact Maria Sipilä, Senior Consultant, Spinverse Ltd.
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