The Ninth Edition of the Pirelli Internetional Award: UNESCO

UNESCO's Venice Office's Announcement of the Awards:

"After having evaluated more than 1,000 entries, coming from over 50 countries, particularly (around 70%) from universities and educational institutions, the international Jury has assigned the awards, subdivided into the categories: Multimedia Education, the Environment, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and Alice Generation Award.

"The 25,000 Euro-worth Top Pirelli Prize has been awarded to Patrick J. Lynch, Director of the “MedMedia Group” of the School of Medicine of the University of Yale for the project “'NTRODUCTION TO CARDIOTHORACIC IMAGING': it is a broad virtual voyage into the human heart and lungs through anatomy, the pathologies and the techniques for analysis and treatment of illnesses and discomforts that strike these important organs of the human body. The work has also been awarded as the best entry coming from the world of education in the category Multimedia Education.

"Within the same Multimedia Education category, the 15,000 Euro award for the best multimedia product oriented toward the world of education, the project 'MicroArrays MediaBook', that describes the principles of genomics and the technological and scientific effects of these new studies. The work has been produced by 'Media Group' of the University of North Carolina, a team comprised of researchers, programmers and graphic artists coordinated by Walter 'Skip' E. Bollenbacher, who received the award.

"The Environment category has been won by the American company 'EarthTalk Studios', specialized in the production of multimedia tools for schools and education, with “Environmental Science in Practice”, a project commissioned by the renown publishing group, Prentice Hall and dedicated to environmental safekeeping, won an award of 15,000 Euro.

"The ICT Award (20,000 Euro offered by Telecom Italia) was granted to William Sarnaki of the Department of Health of the State of New York for a video-presentation of an innovative technology, the 'Brain-Computer Interfaces For Communication and Control', that uses thecomputer to improve the communication options of people with grave disabilities.

"For the Alice Generation Award, offered by Telecom Italia and reserved to projects by Italian authors, the winners: in the Senior category the 'BANCA DATI AMBIENTALE SULLA LAGUNA DI VENEZIA', a project of the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti; in the Junior category, reserved for candidates under the age of 21, the elementary school “Don Milani” of Altamura in Bari, Italy for the multimedia work 'THE ENGLISH VOWELSOUNDS FOR KIDS', for the study of the English phonetic language. The two projects have been awarded 15.000 and 10.000 Euro respectively.

"The next event with the Pirelli Award is scheduled for next autumn, featuring the awarding ceremony for the Pirelli Relativity Challenge, the contest dedicated to Albert Einstein that the Pirelli Group has organized for the International Year of Physics and that challenges participants to explain the theory of relativity using multimedia tools in less than five minutes."