AIDB Gadgets
AIDB T-shirts featuring the reissued Marconi patent US11913 on wireless telegraphy are available free of charge to members in various sizes. Please contact the Secretariat to arrange for shipping or pickup.
Read More
Winners of the 2008 Bernardo Nobile Award 2008 Nobile Award – ®PaoloBeccari 2008
Francesco Mele, from Nuoro, and Remigiusz Lewandowski, a Polish national, are the winners of the fourth edition of the Bernardo Nobile Award for Patent Research, organized by AREA Science Park and sponsored by AIDB. During a ceremony held today in the Anzellotti Hall of the science park, both received a check for 3,000 euros each from President Giancarlo Michellone, in the master’s degree and doctoral categories, respectively. The winners were also offered free membership in AIDB, the Italian Association of Patent Documentalists, for the year 2009.
The number of submissions received by the expert selection committee far exceeded that of the previous edition, reaching a total of 234 proposed bachelor’s and doctoral theses from all over Italy and beyond. Selecting the best entries was a challenging task, from which Francesco Mele, of the School of Management and Economics at the University of Cagliari, emerged as the winner among the undergraduate students, with his thesis titled “Strategic Alliances for the Development of Technological Innovation: An Empirical Analysis.” The thesis focused on the topic of technological innovation and the methods for measuring and evaluating it, with particular reference to patents. The subject of the study was the medical-pharmaceutical sector, chosen for its innovative nature and extensive use of patents. Specifically, the study examined the field of cancer research, focusing on patents developed through collaboration between two or more companies that pertain to new drugs, new therapeutic techniques, or new methods for treating cancer.
In the doctoral category, Remigiusz Lewandowski, who holds a bachelor’s degree in Technology and Life Sciences from the University of Bydgoszcz (Poland) and a Ph.D. in Methodologies of Biomonitoring of Environmental Alteration from the University of Trieste, won the award for his dissertation titled “Mapping of Biosafety of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) Using Data-Mining Techniques”. The work focuses on “biosafety” in relation to the development and cultivation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). In Europe, the commercialization of GMOs is at the heart of a controversy that has led to loud calls for reassurances—particularly scientific ones—regarding the safety of these organisms and for laws regulating their release into the environment. This has given rise to a truly new discipline—biosafety—whose evolution and perspective have been analyzed based on research available on the internet, using statistical and “data-mining” techniques. For his thesis, Lewandowski also conducted research at the Biosafety Unit of the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB).
“The success of the award named after Bernardo Nobile,” emphasized the general director of AREA Science Park, Giuseppe Colpani – “is confirmation of the brilliant insight of a colleague of ours who passed away too soon; through his expertise and dedication, he enabled AREA to establish a patent information service—now highly valued by the business and scientific communities—at a time when such topics were still largely overlooked by Italian research and innovation institutions. I believe the extraordinary number of nominations received from all over Italy and beyond for this fourth edition is a sign of the recognition that the Pat Lib service and our organization as a whole have earned both nationally and internationally.”
Finally, it should be noted that, for the master’s degree category, the selection committee wished to give a special mention to Filippo Cavanna, who earned his degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Bologna, and whose thesis was published on the AREA Science Park website at www.area.trieste.it.
Click here to download some notes on the two winners, as well as the abstracts of the papers presented.
Photo: © PaoloBeccari 2008