27
May
2004
|
00:00
Europe/Amsterdam

Assigned The 2003 Pirelli Internetional Award

  • ASSIGNED THE 2003 PIRELLI INTERNET IONAL AWARD

THE FIRST RECOGNITION TO SCIENTIFIC DIVULGATION THROUGH THE INTERNET
  • OVER 1,700 ENTRIES, OF WHICH 420 ITALIAN, FOR THE EIGHTH EDITION

  • TOP 25,000 EUROS PRIZE TO AMERICAN MULTIMEDIA WORK WHICH EXPLORES AND ILLUSTRATES THE HUMAN BRAIN

Rome , Italy , May 27 th 2004 - The awards of the eighth edition of the Pirelli Internet ional Award ( www.pirelliaward.com ), the first international multimedia competition launched by Pirelli in 1996 and carried out entirely on the Internet have been assigned today in the historic Temple of Hadrian , in Rome , Italy .

Awards have been granted to winners during a prize-giving ceremony which has been attended by Pasquale Pistorio , Vicepresident of Confindustria; Umberto Colombo , President of the Award's Jury; Andrea Mondello , President of the Chamber of Commerce of Rome; Marco Tronchetti Provera , President of the Pirelli Group, and Carlo Massarini , anchorman of Italian TV and journalist expert in new technologies.

After having evaluated more than 1,700 entries , the international Jury has assigned the awards, subdivided into three main categories: Multimedia Education , the Environment, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), in addition to this year's new Alice Generation Award , reserved to entries presented by Italian authors.

The 25,000 Euros -worth Top Pirelli Prize has been awarded to the American David Grubin Productions and Thirteen/WNET, which, in cooperation with Docstar have realized an effective multimedia presentation on the human brain; the work, The Secret Life of The Brain , hosted on the PBS Internet server has also been awarded as the best entry in Multimedia Education , and is a virtual journey inside the human brain, of which its' functioning and evolution is explained throughout the various stages of life, by means of videos, animations and detailed scientific data.

"The Pirelli Internet ional Award - as stated by President Marco Tronchetti Provera - aims at enlightening Mankind's scientific and technological heritage, by giving universal access to it through the Internet. We believe that the diffusion of scientific and technological advances are as important as their discovery. This Award fully reflects Pirelli's spirit, because it merges research and technology -the two basic development factors with transparency and divulgation of knowledge."

Within the same Multimedia Education category, the 15,000 Euros award for the best multimedia product coming from schools, universities and research centers was granted to the British project Hyperstaffs , realized by a group of university students and designers coordinated by professor Melissa Lee Price. The work is a set of interactive lessons on three different scientific disciplines

The Environment category has been won by NASA, with the project NASA's Sun-Earth Viewer on the interaction between the Sun and the Earth, and a public-private partnership of Melbourne (Australia) for the multimedia work Home Water Investigator both granted with 15,000 Euros each .

The ICT Award ( 20,000 Euros offered by Telecom Italia ) was granted to the Romanian firm ATS (Advanced Technology Systems) for the e-government project Atlas , an integrated information system for the local public administration in Romania .

The first edition of the Alice Generation Award , offered by Telecom Italia and reserved to projects by Italian authors has seen the participation of over 420 entries. The Senior category (of the value of 15,000 Euros ) has been won ex aequo by the INFM Istituto Nazionale per la Fisica della Materia, for the Project Energy and its transformations ( http://maccw.sns.it/energia ), dedicated to physics, and by an interuniversity group from Milan for the interactive exhibit Matemilano (maths+Milan) . In the Junior category , for under-21 candidates, the winner has been the Nautical Institute Nino Bixio of Piano di Sorrento ( Naples ) with the project Water : the world of algae, which has been awarded 10,000 Euros .

The Pirelli Internet ional Award is open to all Internet users worldwide, and it has a prize budget of more than 100,000 Euros for the best multimedia works which contribute to the diffusion of scientific and technological culture through the Internet. All entries are evaluated by an international Jury, coordinated by Professor Colombo and including, among others, the Information Technology expert of the European Community, George Metakides, the "New Scientist" Editor in Chief, Alun Anderson, and the MIT Media Lab director, Walter Bender.