Programme details

René Descartes, a mathematician, natural scientist and philosopher who journeyed across Europe in pursuit of knowledge.
In this same spirit The European Union Descartes Prize acknowledges that science today is not the preserve of a single brilliant mind in a single country.
In this film you are given a snap shot of the accomplishments of the European research partnerships that have been short listed for the 2001 Descartes Prize.
The Descartes Prize Grand Jury is composed of a panel of personalities of renown, drawn from industry and academia. Yves Michot is the president of the year's Grand Jury panel.

Biodepth

The Team

John Lawton is the coordinator and leader of the Biodepth project. This research has set up experiments at 8 different sites, Umea in Sweden, Cork in Ireland, one at Silwood Park and one at Sheffield, sites at Bayreuth in Germany, near Zurich in Switzerland, near Lisbon in Portugal and Lesbos in Greece. The researchers collaborated with colleagues in Paris, in France. Outside Europe, they had principal collaborations with the University of Minnesota and also the University of Kansas.

The Research

The team did research on the extinction of species and the key question they wanted to ask is what happens when you lose species from the ecosystem. What happens to the productivity of the ecosystem? What happens to the other functions that are essential for a healthy ecosystem. To get a general answer they had to do the experiments at as many sites as possible across Europe and in as many as many different climates and soil conditions, and so on.
At each site ploughed it up a meadow and killed all the existing vegetation and then we sowed into those plots little 2 by 2 meter gardens with an exactly known number of composition of plant species. Once the plots were established they were able to measure a whole series of features of the ecosystems,

The Results

The results tell us is that species rich grass lands are more productive and produce more biomass than species poor grasslands. The results were strikingly and surprisingly similar at all sites.

Automatic Brain Interface

The Team

Jose del R. Millan is researcher at the Joint Research Centre of the European Community at Ispra, Italy. They collaborated with teams from Santa Lucia Foundation in Rome, Italy, the Helsinki University of Technology, Finland, and Fase Sistemi, a Roman company specialized in integrating hardware for signal gauging.

The Research

The project was motivated by the idea of integrating various disciplines like neuroscience and computing to attain a single goal: a new mean of communication between man and environment. The research enables communication between a person and a computer through control of thoughts. To achieve this, the person’s mental activity must be measured with a portable device.

The Results

The first to benefit will be persons with serious motor handicaps because the brain interface will allow them to overcome their limitations.

3. Development of New Catalysts for chemical Manufacturing

The Team

Michael North is the coordinator of the European Union founded project on the development of new asymmetric catalysts for chemical manufacturing.
The research brings together teams from University of Paris VII, the University of Oxford, the Max Plank Institute for asymmetric catalysis in Rostock, the Nesmianov Institute of Organo-Element Compounds in Moscow and in Arovan in Armenia.

The Research

Catalysis is an academically stimulating area which also offers the possibility to make a real contribution towards the development of new manufacturing methods for importing chemicals. By employing a network of scientists with different skills the team was not only able to discover novel catalysts but they were then able to understand exactly how those catalysts work and hence to design and prepare even better catalysts which are sufficiently active to be used in industrial chemistry.

The Results

The researchers were able to discover over 20 new catalysts for various important chemical reactions and the most important of those have been patented and will soon be used industrially to prepare important chemicals within the European Union.

4. Safetrain

The Team

António Vacas Carvalho is an engineer with Bombardier Transportation in Portugal and leading a project on developing devices for increased passenger safety in trains.
Companies from many countries worked on Safetrain, including major railway companies such as SNCF from France, German Railways, the polish Railway operator PKP and the International Union of Railways as well as stock manufacturers like Bombardier, Alstom, Duewag of Siemens and research centres such as the University of Lisbon, University of Valenciennes, University of Dresden, The Cranfield Impact Centre and AEA from the United Kingdom.

The Research

The team did research on increasing passive safety on trains and, in addition, developed an ontology by drafting a common agreement on passive safety recommendations for a wide range of trains. They developed anti-climbing devices and couplers which have the capacity to absorb energy in order to increase passive security.

The Results

Passengers and drivers on board trains benefit from the increased passive security.

5. Mechanism of Protease Inhibition in the Protection of Lungs

The Team

Robin Carrel is Professor of hematology at the University of Cambridge and the team leader on the project studying the mechanism of protease inhibition in the protection of the lungs. He got together a team in Cambridge with his colleagues Professor David Lowmass, Dr Jim Huntington and Professor Randy Reed and joined up with a group in the Netherlands led by Professor Yann Peter Abrahams.

The Research

The team did research on a deficiency in a blood protein that results in lung disease and liver disease. The connection between the two was not clear, but they were convinced that if they could solve the mystery it would open up new understandings in biology and medicine. Proteins were thought of as being stationary objects, but the researchers introduced the idea, that we were looking at a protein that could change its shape.

The Results

The results are opening prospects for the design of small drugs which hopefully will be able to be used to prevent the lung and liver disease Because the same process is involved in coagulation of blood, the findings are already being used to develop new anticoagulants to stop blood clotting. Maybe the results of the research could be used to treat Alzheimer and other similar brain deterioration diseases

6. The "Chemistry" of Conical Intersections

The Team

Massimo Olivucci leads the team from the University of Siena in collaboration with King’s Collage in London and The University of Bologna, Italy.

The Research

The team harnessed a fundamental chemical problem: understanding how light energy can be used from molecules, in particular organic molecules, to be, for example, converted into heat or used to form new molecules.

The Results

Understanding how light is transformed into thermal energy or can be exploited to create new materials could lead to noteworthy technological by-products.

7. Development of Novel Drugs Against HIV

The Team

Jan Balzarini is associated to the Rega Institute of the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, in particular to the laboratory of virology and chemotherapy.
For this project an intensive co-operation was launched with teams from the Karolinska Institute from Stockholm, Sweden, C.S.I.C. Institute from Madrid, Spain, Tor Vergata Institute from Rome, Italy, I.O.C.B. from Prague, Czech Republic, Welsh School of Pharmacy, Cardiff, United Kingdom,, but also with the National Health Institute, Washington D.C., the USA, Kagoshima University of Japan and teams from Australia and a few African countries.

The Research

The major goal of the research project is to develop efficient medication against HIV infection and find new targets to prevent infection and the spread of the virus. The researchers focused on drug resistance, currently one of the biggest problems in HIV therapy.

The Results

In order to be able to discover the mechanism of new products, the researchers had to develop new chemical synthetic techniques as well as virological and molecular biology techniques. The products the developed have been introduced to clinics by the pharmaceutical industry to treat patients infected with HIV in order to help suppress the disease.

Conclusion

The winners of the 2001 Descartes Prize, an award for scientific excellence on the initiative of the European Commission, were selected from among these seven projects.