science

Millennium Technology Prize

Millennium Technology Prize is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Millennium Technology Prize rather than just read about it. In short: The Millennium Technology Prize (Finnish: Millennium-teknologiapalkinto) is one of the world's largest technology prizes. It is awarded once every two years by Technology Academy Finland, an independent foundation established by Finnish industries, academic institutions, and the state of Finland.

Key takeaways

Millennium Technology Prize belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Millennium Technology Prize to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Millennium Technology Prize from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Millennium Technology Prize (Finnish: Millennium-teknologiapalkinto) is one of the world's largest technology prizes. It is awarded once every two years by Technology Academy Finland, an independent foundation established by Finnish industries, academic institutions, and the state of Finland. The patron of the prize is the President of Finland. The Millennium Technology Prize is Finland's tribute to innovations for a better life. The aims of the prize are to promote technological research and Finland as a high-tech Nordic welfare state. The prize was inaugurated in 2004.

The Prize The idea of the prize came originally from the Finnish academician Pekka Jauho, with American real estate investor and philanthropist Arthur J Collingsworth encouraging its establishment. The Prize celebrates innovations that have a favorable and sustainable impact on quality of life and well-being of people. The innovations also must have been applied in practice and stimulate further research and development. Compared to the Nobel Prize the Millennium Technology Prize is a technology award, whereas the Nobel Prize is a science award. Furthermore, the Nobel Prize is awarded for basic research, but the Millennium Technology Prize may be given to a recently conceived innovation which is still being developed. The Millennium Technology Prize is not intended as a reward for lifetime achievement. The Millennium Technology Prize is awarded by Technology Academy Finland (formerly Millennium Prize Foundation and Finnish Technology Award Foundation), established in 2002 by eight Finnish organisations supporting technological development and innovation. The prize sum is 1 million euros (~US$1.3 million). The Millennium Technology Prize is awarded every second year and its patron is the president of Finland. Universities, research institutes, national scientific and engineering academies, high-tech companies, and other organizations around the world are eligible to nominate individuals or groups for the award. Nominations are accepted from any field except military technology. In accordance with the rules of the Technology Academy Finland, a proposal concerning the winner of the Millennium Technology Prize is made to the board of the foundation by the eight-member international selection committee, and the final decision on the prize winner is made by the board of the foundation.

International Selection Committee (ISC) Current members of the selection committee include:

Päivi Törmä, Professor at Aalto University and Chairman of ISC 2017-2024. Nigel Brandon, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at Imperial College London Thierry E. Klein, President of Bell Labs Solutions Research at Nokia Bell Labs Ilan Spillinger, Executive Vice President and Corporate CTO of IMEC. Sirpa Jalkanen, Professor of Immunology at University of Turku Cecilia Tortajada, Professor in Practice in Environmental Innovation (Interdisciplinary Studies) in the University of Glasgow Past committee members include:

Jonathan Knowles, Visiting Professor, FIMM, HiLIFE, University of Helsinki, Finland Tero Ojanperä, Chairman of Silo.AI company Jarl-Thure Eriksson, Chancellor of Åbo Akademi University and former Rector of Tampere University of Technology (Finland) Eva-Mari Aro, Professor in Molecular Plant Biology at University of Turku (Finland) Jaakko Astola, Professor of Signal Processing at Tampere University of Technology (Finland) Craig R. Barrett, Retired CEO/Chairman of the Board of Intel Corporation (United States) Riitta Hari, Director of both the multidisciplinary Brain Research Unit of the Low Temperature Laboratory at Aalto University and the national Centre of Excellence on Systems Neuroscience and Neuroimaging Research (Finland) Konrad Osterwalder, Former Rector of the United Nations University and Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations (Switzerland) Ayao Tsuge, President of the Japan Federation of Engineering Society and President of Japan International Science and Technology Exchange Center (Japan)

Laureates

*The ceremony was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and was held on 18 May 2021.

See also Harvey Prize IMU Abacus Medal Japan Prize Kyoto Prize Nobel Prize Schock Prize Shaw Prize Tang Prize ACM Turing Award IET Faraday Medal IEEE Medal of Honor Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering List of engineering awards

References

External links The Millennium Technology Prize - Official site The Millennium Technology Prize Youtube Channel Technology Academy Finland - Official site

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Millennium Technology Prize

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Millennium Technology Prize claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Millennium Technology Prize before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Millennium Technology Prize ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Millennium Technology Prize

In research: Millennium Technology Prize appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Millennium Technology Prize in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Millennium Technology Prize is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics International science and technology awards, Invention awards, Science and technology in Finland, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Millennium Technology Prize outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Millennium Technology Prize in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Millennium Technology Prize means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Millennium Technology Prize out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Millennium Technology Prize in simple terms?

Why does Millennium Technology Prize matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Millennium Technology Prize?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Millennium Technology Prize.