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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:

• Other videos on the competition website, to be subtitled in English in May.
• Veli-Matti Ikävalko, Coordinator, Aalto University Junior, veli-matti.ikavalko@aalto.fi, +358 50 351 1103