European Inventor of the Year 2008

Top Dozen inventors compete for European innovation prize

The European Patent Office (EPO) and the European Commission have announced the twelve nominees for this year's Inventor of the Year awards. An independent and high-profile international jury has nominated twelve outstanding researchers and their inventions which have had a significant impact on our everyday lives and were patented by the EPO between 1993 and 2002.

The prizes will be awarded in four categories: industry, small- and medium-sized enterprises/research institutes, non-European countries and lifetime achievement. Past winners include German scientist Peter Grünberg, who won the Nobel Prize for physics in 2007 after receiving the European Inventor of the Year 2006 award. He discovered the giant magnetoresistance (GMR) effect, which considerably increased the storage capacity of hard drives.

This year, Douglas Anderson, Robert Henderson and Roger Lucas from the UK have been nominated for developing a new ophthalmoscope laser scanning technology for the eye. The scope allows for painless and powerful examination of the retina with a view to earlier detection of dangerous medical conditions such as eye cancers, diabetes and high blood pressure.

The list of nominees brings together some of the foremost inventors of the past decade, such as Eric De Clerq, who developed the drug cocktail which has become standard in AIDS treatment; Leonardo Chiariglione, the creator of digital TV and MPEG technology; and Stefan Hell, the scientist who overcame the conventional physical limits in light microscopy. Other inventions considered for the prize have brought advances in car manufacturing to make driving safer and cleaner, or have addressed the problem of noise pollution from aeroplane engines.

The awards will be presented by the President of the Republic of Slovenia, Danilo Türk, and EPO President Alison Brimelow at a gala event in Ljubljana on 6 May, held in conjunction with the European Patent Forum 2008.

To find out more about the European Inventor of the Year 2008, see www.epo.org/patent-forum .