Brussels, 03/04/2007 (Agence Europe) - On 18 April in Munich, the vice-president of the European Commission, Günter Verheugen, and the president of the European Patent Office, Alain Pompidou ,will be awarding prizes for the European Inventor of the Year 2007. A jury pre-selected 12 inventions in four categories: (1) Industry: - an automatically adjusting pacemaker (Malcom Begemann, Willem Boute and Marijn Gemert; Deam Corp; Netherlands); - direct injection system for automobile engines (Hans Meixner and Randolf Mock; Siemens AG; Germany); - Bosch process for manufacture of micro-structures in sensors in sensors (Franz Lammer and Andrea Urban; Robert Bosch GmbH; Germany); (2) SME: - STDMA data link to determine position of aircraft and ships (Hakan Lans; GP&C Systems International AB; Sweden); - tissue engineering (Karlheinz Schmidt; Germany); - biodegradable plastics (Catia Bastioli, Vittorio Bellotti, Luciano del Giudice and Roberto Lombi; Novamont S.p.a; Italy); (3) non-European countries: - Blue LEDs (Shuji Nakamura; University of California Santa Barbara; USA); - intravenous injection of immuno-suppressant Tacrolimus (Shigeao Nakanishi and Iwao Yamanaka; Astellas Pharma Inc.; Japan); - Crixivan, a protease inhibitor to fight HIV (Joseph P. Vacca, Katharine Holloway, Bruce D. Dorsey, Randall W. Hungate and James P. Guare; Merck; USA); (4) lifetime achievements: - Alec Jeffreys University of Leicester in the United Kingdom (DNA fingerprint); - Tim Lüth from the Technische Universität München in Germany (surgical robots); - Marc Feldmann from the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology in London (treatment of auto-immune diseases through findings on role of cytokines). (oj)