DNA and Fiber-Optic Innovations Recognized For Prestigious Award

The creator of DNA fingerprinting, Professor Alec Jeffreys, and several inventors are on the shortlist for the prestigious Millennium Technology Prize.

The finalists include Prof David Payne, co-inventor of an optical amplifier which transformed telecommunications, Payne’s co-inventors, Prof Emmanual Desurvire and Dr Randy Giles.

Dr Andrew Viterbi, whose algorithm aids communications, and biomaterial pioneer Prof Robert Langer are also on the list.

The Millennium Technology Prize is given every second year for a technology that "significantly improves the quality of human life, today and in the future". It is one of the most prestigious awards for technological innovation and is considered a kind of unofficial Noble Prize in the field.

The Technology Academy Finland, an independent foundation established by Finnish industry, in partnership with the Finnish government, awards the prize.

The winner receives 800,000 euros, while the creators of the other innovations will be awarded 15,000 euros each.

Previous award winners include Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web, and Prof Shuji Nakamura, inventor of blue, green and white light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and the blue laser diode.

Sir Alec, from the University of Leicester, UK considers the nomination an honor and a great recognition for DNA technology and the way it has progressed over the last 24 years.

"If nothing else, DNA has captured the public’s imagination; it’s out there every single day in papers and on the television; and the technology has reached out and touched the lives of 20 million people," said Jeffreys.

“The only people not celebrating this honor were criminals being caught thanks to DNA fingerprinting," he added.

Sir Alec described his innovation as a “Eureka Moment” when he saw both similarities and differences in his technician’s family DNA during an experiment in 1984.

He said the current research focus was to reduce the time lag between taking a DNA test and getting a result, or fingerprint.

"It can be as quick as a few hours, but we want to get it down to a second, to real time. Imagine the security possibilities if we could establish identity that quickly," he said.

Others on the shortlist

MIT Professor Robert Langer, a pioneer in biomaterials, was nominated for his inventions and development of innovative biomaterials for controlled drug release and tissue regeneration that have saved and improved the lives of millions of people.

Andrew Viterbi, an Italian-American engineer made the shortlist for his creation of an algorithm that makes billions of phone calls every day possible on mobile networks.

Also making the shortlist were three scientists who developed technology that made possible the creation of a high-speed global fiber-optic network.

In the mid-1980s, Prof David Payne, and his team at Southampton University, was in competition with Dr Emmanuel Desurvire and Dr Randy Giles at Bell Labs to develop an optical amplifier that could solve the inadequacies of fiber optic cables of the day.

The two teams created the erbium-doped fiber amplifier, an optical amplifier which was power efficient and enabled light to travel along cables without having to be transformed into an electrical signal and then resent with a new laser.

Payne was the first to publish a paper about erbium-doped fiber amplifiers, but Dr Desurvire and Dr Giles were first to make it a working tool.

The amplifier transformed the telecommunications industry and is now a vital part of the global optical fiber network that acts as a backbone to the net.

Payne was proud and honored by his role in creating amplifiers that helped the global roll-out of the internet and optical telecommunications and added that “fiber to the home was essential if Britain was going to compete with broadband take-up around the world”.

"Sadly broadband speeds in this country aren’t really broadband at all. I won’t be happy until every home has a one gigabit per second connection," said Payne.

He said fiber networks needed to grow if they were to cope with demand for bandwidth in the future.

"Forward projections show that we will fill up the bandwidth of the existing backbone around 2015. What that means is that you have to put in as many fibers every year as the growth of the internet,” he added.

The Millennium Technology Prize will be awarded on June 11.