Brussels, 05/11/2004 (Agence Europe) - On 2 December, the 2004 Descartes Prize-giving ceremony will be held at Prague Castle, attended by the Research Commissioner and the President of the Czech Republic. Eight teams of researchers from 17 countries are competing in the final stages of the competition. The prize-winners will share a total prize of 1 million euros.
The eight projects shortlisted are:
Malicious and Accidental Fault Tolerance for Internet Applications. This project group is made up of French, Portuguese, British, German and Swiss researchers working under Dr Robert Stroud of Newcastle Upon Tyne University on protection of complex IT systems (http://www.maftia.org ).
A group of researchers including Professor John Martin of University College London, Pr. Seppo Yla-Herttuala of Kuopio University in Finland, Prof. Georg Breier of Technische Universität Dresden in Germany, and Prof. Rodolfo Paoletti of Milan University in Italy, has developed cardiovascular treatment using a vessel growth gene. The gene is currently used locally to encourage the rebuilding of vascular tissue and this research is looking for a growth inhibitor to combat abnormal vessel growth in the eyes. The same group has developed a protein, Scavidin, for use in chemotherapy to limit damage to healthy tissue surrounding a tumour.
Another group has looked at cell migration and the role of urokinase receptors with a view to discovering cancer treatment or prevention. The team includes Professors Francesco Blasi of University Vita-Salute San Raffaele in Italy and Keld Dano of Finsen Laboratory in Denmark.
Professors Vincenzo Balzani of the University of Bologna in Italy, Fritz Vögtle of Rheinische-Friedrich-Wilhems-Universität Bonn in Germany, and Luisa De Cola of Amsterdam University have worked on a new family of polymers, called dendrimers, for use in a series of applications.
Mitochondrial Biogenesis Ageing and Disease was studied by Swedish, British, Italian and French researchers, led by Prof. Howy Jacobs of the University of Tampere in Finland. They looked at the range of mechanisms and disorders that cause mitochondriopathies. Greater understanding of mitochondria (cytoplasmic organisms found in cells) may help combat DNA mutations and deletions which cause a wide range of diseases affecting muscles and the nervous system.
IST-QuComm. This project was made up of researchers from Germany, France, the UK, Switzerland, the US, and France, under Prof. Anders Karlsson of Kungl Tekniska Hogskolan in Sweden, who demonstrated the feasibility of quantum teleportation for atomic and photonic particles. This could open the door to future applications in the transport of information (http://www.imit.kth.se/QEO/qucomm/ )
Computational Science of Novel Materials is a fifteen-year project of researches from the Czech Republic, Hungary and Austria under Prof. Peter Weinberger of the Centre for Computational Materials Science in Vienna. They aim to discover new data storage materials (http://www.cms.tuwien.ac.at ).
APLOMB is a network of researchers from Spain, Italy, the UK, Germany, Slovenia and Bulgaria, headed by Prof. Peter Towsend of the University of Sussex, looking at improving cancer diagnosis, using the less damaging photons instead of X-rays.