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European Inventor of the Year 2006

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Almost 400 visitors gathered at the spectacular Autoworld Museum in Brussels on 3 May 2006 to see EPO President Alain Pompidou and European Commission Vice President Günter Verheugen honour the European Inventors of the Year 2006 at the first-ever awards ceremony organised jointly by the two institutions. Among the guests were representatives from the European Commission, the European Parliament, SIPO, OAPI, ARIPO and European industries as well as Nicole Fontaine, the former president of the European Parliament.

Professor Pompidou described the event as "historic" in his opening address and said that inventors should be "treated like pop stars". Commissioner Verheugen expressed his hope that one day "the European Inventor of the Year will have the same prestige as the Nobel Prize".

Winners

• Industry:
  Zbigniew Janowicz and Cornelis Hollenberg, who invented a method for making proteins in Hansenula yeast, which is used to produce an affordable vaccine against hepatitis B;
• Small and medium-sized enterprises:
  Stephen P.A. Fodor, Michael C. Pirrung, J. Leighton Read and Lubert Stryer for their invention of the DNA chip;
• Universities and research institutes:
  Peter Grünberg for his discovery of the giant-magnetoresistance effect, or GMR;
• New EU member states:
  John Starrett, Joanne Bronson, John Martin, Muzammil Mansuri and David Tortolani, whose work resulted in a breakthrough with chemical compounds, called prodrugs of phosphonates;
• Non-European countries:
  Larry Gold and Craig Tuerk, who found out that nucleic acids can bind a protein to potentially intercept other proteins that cause diseases like AMD;
• Lifetime achievement:
  Federico Faggin, for inventing the microprocessor.

Photos from the gala event

See photos from and information about the European Inventor of the Year 2007.