Nearly a third of the innovators nominated for the 2022 Millennium Technology Prize are women. The record-breaking 28.1 per cent nominees are significantly higher than the 9.9 per cent in 2020, the last time the prize was awarded.

 

A total of 40 innovations were nominated for 2022. The €1-million ($1.1 million) global prize will next be awarded on October 25, 2022.

 

“We are very proud of the huge increase in the proportion of women among the nominees. Raising the number of female nominees was an important goal in this recently-completed nomination round, and it is very gratifying to see how the technology sector took up the challenge so well,” said Minna Palmroth, Chair of the Board at Technology Academy Finland, the organisation behind the Millennium Technology Prize.

 

Top-level science and technology is still often seen as the domain of men; the Millennium Technology Prize wants to break down this assumption and encourage more women into the field.

 

“We need more women involved in tackling our shared global challenges, and our mission is to highlight the top talent in technology and innovation. The proportion of women among top-level prize winners does not match the real contribution of female innovators,” says Palmroth.

 

Nominations for the Millennium Technology Prize are submitted from organisations all around the world.

 

The Technology Academy Finland does not itself seek out the prize winners. Instead, the winner is chosen from among the external nominations that meet the set criteria. The nominated innovation developers may be individuals or groups.

 

This time round, the award criteria was updated and now emphasise the potential of award-winning technologies to conserve natural resources and to promote biodiversity and equality.

 

In addition, assessment of the nominations also gives attention to the global accessibility of the technology and the ethical guidelines used in its development.

 

For 2022, the highest number of nominations (one third of the total) received have been for the Life Science category, which covers areas such as biosciences, medicine and food.

 

The Energy and the Environment and ICT and smart systems categories, meanwhile, both gathered a quarter of the nominations.

 

The New materials, processes and manufacturing category received 5 per cent of total nominations.

 

Of the total nominations, 45 per cent were from Europe, 25 per cent from North America, 15 per cent from Asia-Pacific, 10 per cent from the Middle East and 5 per cent from Africa.

 

The Millennium Technology Prize is patronised by the President of Finland. It has been awarded since 2004, and its winners include Shinya Yamanaka for his development of ethical stem cells, Stuart Parkin (data storage capacity), and Shankar Balasubramanian and David Klenerman (fast and inexpensive DNA sequencing).

 

Three of the 11 prize winners have later been awarded the Nobel Prize. –Tradearabia News Service