News

Young people seeking solutions for better future

Millennium Youth Prize is a new technology competition for 14 to 18-year-olds.
youth_prize_en_en.jpg

Aalto University and Technology Academy Finland are running for the first time a technology competition for 14 to 18-year-olds. Millennium Youth Prize invites young people to present solutions to current global challenges by drawing on health technologies and new sustainable development energy solutions. The participants receive the challenges to be solved from Aalto professors Heikki J. Nieminen, Anton Kuzyk, Mari Lundström and Peter Lund.

‘Through this award, we want to inspire young people to engage with technology and innovation and to find new kinds of solutions. Young people have the keys to a better future for all of us’, affirms Tuija Pulkkinen, Vice President of Aalto University.

Participants can send their solutions as either written reports, videos, prototypes or any combination of these. The assessment criteria are scientific rigour, creativity, innovativeness and viability.

Those submitting the best solutions will be invited to the Junction event to be held on Aalto University campus in November 2018, where a panel of experts will announce the winners. A total of €10 000 of prize money will be awarded. The competition will run from 23 May to 4 November 2018.

The international one-million-euro Millennium Technology Prize is Finland’s tribute to innovations for a better life and sustainable development. The winner of this year’s Millennium Technology Prize will be announced on 22 May in Helsinki. The new Millennium Youth Prize is being run in the same spirit as its older forebear: the competition’s categories are the same as the prize categories for previous years of the Millennium Technology Prize and both awards encourage the development of new solutions for improving quality-of-life.

Aalto University will be holding a public lecture for the winner of the Millennium Technology Prize at 9.00 on 23 May in the Undergraduate Centre in Otaniemi. After the lecture, Aalto University will be offering upper secondary school students the opportunity to meet the prize winner in person. This opportunity is open to the first 50 students who register for it.

Further information:

  • Published:
  • Updated:

Read more news

The new, more sensitive infrared sensor brings benefits to many different technologies. Photo: Aalto University / Xiaolong Liu
Press releases, Research & Art Published:

Building better infrared sensors

New innovation significantly boosts sensor responsivity
An artistic rendering of two chips on a circuit board, one is blue and the other is orange and light is emitting from their surf
Press releases Published:

Researchers aim to correct quantum errors at super-cold temperatures instead of room temperature

One of the major challenges in the development of quantum computers is that the quantum bits, or qubits, are too imprecise. More efficient quantum error correction is therefore needed to make quantum computers more widely available in the future. Professor Mikko Möttönen has proposed a novel solution for quantum error correction and has received a three-year grant from the Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation to develop it.
Modern and Mesopotamian people experience love in a rather similar way. In Mesopotamia, love is particularly associated with the liver, heart and knees. Figure: Modern/PNAS: Lauri Nummenmaa et al. 2014, Mesopotamian: Juha Lahnakoski 2024.
Press releases Published:

We might feel love in our fingertips –– but did the Ancient Mesopotamians?

A multidisciplinary team of researchers studied a large body of texts to find out how people in the ancient Mesopotamian region (within modern day Iraq) experienced emotions in their bodies thousands of years ago, analysing one million words of the ancient Akkadian language from 934-612 BC in the form of cuneiform scripts on clay tablets.
Three white, folded paper structures of varying sizes and shapes arranged on a grey surface.
Cooperation, Press releases, Research & Art Published:

New origami packaging technology creates sustainable and eye-catching alternatives to conventional packing materials

Origami packaging enables completely new properties for cartonboard, making it an excellent alternative to, for example, plastic and expanded polystyrene in packaging. The aesthetics of the material have also garnered interest from designers.