Millennium Distinction Awards to Finnish stem cell research and open source experts
The purpose of the Millennium Distinction Awards is to highlight outstanding Finnish achievements in the field of the most recent Millennium Technology Grand Prize winners. The winners of the 2012 prize came from two different fields: stem cell research and open source development.
Jolla is one of the winners of Millennium Distinction Award. The company is set to launch a smartphone that uses their own open-source based Sailfish operating system towards the end of this year.
The winners of Millennium Technology Prize 2012 were Finnish-American Linus Torvalds, developer of the kernel of the Linux open source operating system, which has had a significant impact on the openness and development of the Internet, and Japanese researcher Shinya Yamanaka, whose research team successfully generated induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) which are capable of self-renewal.
The Millennium Distinction Awards are given by Technology Academy Finland TAF to two Finnish researchers and two companies operating in the same field as the winners of the 2012 Millennium Technology Prize.
The awards for stem cell research go to Senior Scientist Riikka Lund from the Turku Centre for Biotechnology, and to the Helsinki-based biotechnology company Glykos Finland Ltd.
The open source awards go to Professor Matti Rossi from Aalto University and to the smartphone company Jolla Ltd.
The work of the winners of the Millennium Distinction Awards is just as pioneering as that of the technology prizewinners. The two disciplines are quite different, however: Finnish stem cell research remains a narrow and relatively new area of research, whereas in open source development there is much broader expertise.
Pioneering open source development and bold entrepreneurial spirit
Professor Matti Rossi from the Department of Information and Service Economy at Aalto University, winner of the open source research award, has significantly promoted the use of open source code and its use in Finland and globally through his international networks.
“Our research has shown that it is possible to create services that users are willing to pay for without compromising openness. The openness of data and code is also important for society in general. Opening up public data is an excellent way of supporting active civic society in the Nordic region,” says Rossi.
Openness is not without its problems, however. “The greatest threats to openness are associated with the combination of large-scale data, which can lead to serious privacy problems and thereby nurture general unwillingness to support the development of transparency,” Rossi says.
The winner of the open source company award, Jolla Ltd., a smartphone company founded by former Nokia employees in 2011, is a new type of Finnish enterprise whose operations represent a combination of demanding goals, international funding and bold risk-taking. The company is set to launch a smartphone that uses their own open-source based Sailfish operating system towards the end of this year.
According to Jolla CEO Tomi Pienimäki, the award shows that transparency is important and that openness is appreciated in the sector.
“Co-creation with open source communities can leverage the talent of thousands of developers and enables us to achieve things that would otherwise not be possible. Openness is also a security issue: many eyeballs on the code and processes help prevent backdoors and increase user privacy,” says Pienimäki.
Stem cell research breakthroughs
Winner of the award in the stem cell research series, Senior Scientist Riikka Lund heads the stem cell research team at Turku Centre for Biotechnology together with professor Riitta Lahesmaa. In her research, Lund has studied the mechanisms that enable stem cells to maintain their unique capacity for self-renewal, and how the balance of the stem cell genome may become unstable and alter the regulation of cancer-related genes, for example.
Lund has also participated in the development of a database that enables the examination of gene activity in stem cells across the entire genome and in the products differentiated from them.
According to Lund, there is broad expertise in stem cell research in Finland. “It is important to support both basic and applied stem cell research in order to build a solid foundation for future biomedical applications. Stem cells offer a new way to study illnesses and search for suitable treatments in experimental conditions.”
The winner of the corporate stem cell research series, Glykos Finland Ltd, is a Helsinki-based biotechnology company whose products and technology are based on glycobiology.
Founded in 2004, Glykos has grown to become profitable and has built a significant patent portfolio. Stem cell products account for about a quarter of the company’s products. In the jury’s view, Glykos is well set to develop applications on the basis of Yamanaka’s innovation.
The company’s stem cell products focus on laboratory processing of stem cells. “Combining information about the surface structure of stem cells with that of, say, cancer cells, gives us information about the behaviour of the latter, which then helps us to develop more effective drugs for treatment,” says Juhani Saarinen CEO of Glykos.
Read more about awarded researchers and companies at: www.technologyacademy.fi. Technology Academy Finland is one of the main organisers of Millennium Youth Camp with Finland’s Science Education Centre LUMA and Aalto University.
