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INBio: winner of the 2003 Tech Museum Award
* Presented with a $50,000 award in the Environmental category.
* Award highlights efforts around the world where technology is used to improve humans’ quality of life.
October 16th, 2003 — The National Biodiversity Institute (INBio), of Costa Rica, was presented yesterday with the “2003 Tech Museum Award: Technology Benefiting Humanity”, given by the Tech Museum of Innovation located at San José, California (USA).
INBio was selected among five finalists for the award in the environmental category, sponsored by Intel, for using informatics technologies to support the process of gathering, processing and sharing information about Costa Rican biodiversity.
The award, which consists of US$50.000 cash honorarium, was given last night at the black tie gala award ceremony, attended by Dr. Erick Mata, INBio’s Biodiversity Informatics Director: “We feel that this acknowledgement shows that, big challenges in a developing country, can be faced if we know how to integrate scientific and technological know-how with our society’s human capacity”, he pointed out.
The awards, presented in partnership with the American Council for the United Nations and Santa Clara University’s Center for Science, Technology, and Society, are designed to honor individuals, for-profit companies and public and not-for-profit organizations from around the world who are applying technology to improve the human well-being in the categories of environment, economic development, education, equality and health.
This year the judges considered more than 500 nominations from 70 countries, from these 25 were selected (5 per category). The five final awardees come from Bangladesh, Canada, Costa Rica, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Nepal and the United States.
“With these awards, the Tech Museum of Innovation wants to inspire future scientists and technologists to take advantage of the incredible power and promise of technology to solve the challenges that confront us in the 21st Century”, said the Tech Museum president, Peter Giles.
If you need more information, please contact Alejandra Zúñiga or María Paz Ramírez, at INBio, phone number + (506) 507-8147 or (506) 507-8159
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