IP/00/1268
Brussels, 8 November 2000
Busquin awards € 660,000 Descartes science prize
Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin today awarded the €660,000 René
Descartes Prize Euro to a group of international researchers in recognition of
their scientific excellence and international teamwork. The winners are a
team led by Prof Tim Smith (UK, chemistry), Dr Dago de Leeuw (NL,
electronics) and Prof Alan Lehmann (UK, genetics). Eight groups of
researchers from a range of disciplines had been shortlisted by a high-level
jury from some 100 trans-european teams.
Awarding the prize, Commissioner Busquin said: "This is the first time that a scientific
prize has been given to international groups of researchers rather than to
individuals. Successful cross-border teamwork is often a determining factor behind
the excellence of European scientific research, but isn’t normally a selection criterion
in international prizes. I believe that networking between researchers is essential for
European research to be a world leader”.
The Descartes Prize is a new award created by the European Commission to
recognise scientific excellence and international teamwork. It is funded by the EU
research budget and will henceforth be an annual award.
This year, the Descartes prizes were awarded for research in developing new
methods of studying chemical reaction kinetics at very low temperatures, for the
synthesis and application of a new falily of polymeric self-oriented transistors for
electronic circuits and for discovering the link between the processes that repair
genetic material and the means by which genetic material is turned into proteins.
The following eight projects were shortlisted as Descartes Prize finalists:
New batteries for hybrid cars (DE, UK, SE), chemistry at extremely low temperature
(UK, FR), solar energy (ES, DE), European identity study (FR, BE, UK, ES, IT,DE,
HU, CH, LU), plastic transistors for product tagging (NL, DE, UK, DK), prediction of
climate variations (UK, IT, DK, FR, DE, ES), environmentally friendly adhesives for
wood panels (FR, DE), genetic diseases causing cancer (UK, IT, NL, FR)
The Descartes Jury was composed of the following members: Dr Sirkka Hämäläinen
(executive board of the European Central Bank), Mr Pantelis Kyriakides (vicepresident of the European Patent Office), Dr Beatrice Rangoni Macchiavelli (former
president of the Economic and Social Committee), Sir John Maddox (former editor of
‘Nature’), Professor Federico Mayor-Zaragoza (former director general of UNESCO),
Dr Ulf Merbold (Astronaut), Professor Ben Mottelson (Physics Nobel Laureate),
Professor Nikolai Platé (secretary general of the Russian Academy of Sciences),
Professor Anna C. Roosevelt (Curator of Archaeology, Field Museum, Chicago), Mr
Jean Stéphenne (president and general manager SmithKline Beecham).