Nominations for the 2020 Millennium Technology €1 million Prize open – a worldwide call for ground-breaking innovation proposals

Nominations for the 2020 Millennium Technology Prize open today (1 April 2019). The one-million-euro international prize is one of the world’s most important awards for ground-breaking innovations.

The Millennium Technology Prize is presented every two years and awarded for a technological breakthrough made anywhere in the world. The innovation shall help to solve the great challenges of humanity while also being environmentally sustainable

Former winners of the Millennium Technology Prize include Shinya Yamanaka for the development of ethical stem cells, Tim Berners-Lee for the World Wide Web, and Tuomo Suntola for ALD, a nanoscale technology that enables the manufacturing of modern, high-performance computers and smart devices. Three of the winners of the Millennium Technology Prize have subsequently also won the Nobel Prize – most recently Frances Arnold, the 2016 Millennium winner, who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2018. Arnold’s Millennium Technology Prize winning innovation, directed evolution, enables the production of novel enzymes to be used in environmentally-friendly processes in several industrial sectors.

Ari Ahonen, CEO of Technology Academy Finland (TAF), which awards the prize says, “Winners of the Millennium Technology Prize are leading innovators in their respective industries. With their innovations, they have enhanced the quality of life for humanity as well as conservation of the environment. The winning innovation must have solid evidence of existing practical applications and the potential for generating new research.”

Nominations for the prize are welcomed from organizations anywhere in the world and in all fields of technology except military technology. The nominee can be a single person or a team.

The 2020 Millennium Technology Prize will be awarded in Helsinki Metropolitan area, Finland, on 26 May 2020. The prize is awarded by the independent foundation Technology Academy Finland. The nominees will be evaluated by the International Selection Committee, composed of leading experts in research and industry. The patron of the Millennium Technology Prize is the President of the Republic of Finland. The award sum of one million euros is donated by the Finnish Government.

Nominations and additional information: Nominations can only be submitted via TAF’s electronic nomination portal between 1 April and 31 July 2019. The portal and detailed nomination criteria and instructions can be found here.