Named in honour of one of Europe's greatest figures of learning René Descartes: mathematician, natural scientist, and philosopher, this prize is awarded to research teams who have obtained exceptional results from European collaborative research. The prize is open to all fields of scientific endeavour. The Descartes Prize aims to raise awareness of the scientific achievements of European scientists, highlighting the benefits of working together and the importance of the results achieved.

Aims and Objectives

Scientific and technological excellence are essential pre-requisites for Europe to succeed in the competitive environment of international research and scientific development. The establishment of the Descartes Prize in 2000 as the major European science prize for outstanding collaborative research in any scientific field reflects this European stance.

The Descartes Prize aims to encourage the best researchers and teams to become involved in and be committed to European research, and to increase the visibility of outstanding research findings produced by European researchers. The prize recognises the collaborative nature of research that is at the heart of any major scientific breakthrough.

Organised via calls for proposals, European/international collaborative research teams submit details of their outstanding research results to the European Commission. Teams must involve at least two mutually independent legal entities established in two different Members States or in a Member State and an Associated State. Provided that these minimum criteria are fulfilled entries may involve teams from outside the European Union.

The prize is awarded via a two step evaluation process. Following evaluation by panels of independent experts, a first shortlist of project finalists is drawn up. The list of finalist projects is then submitted to a Grand Jury, made up of figures of renown, drawn from academia and industry. The Descartes Prize is then announced during a high media-profile award ceremony. Details are posted on this site to find out more click on the section entitled 'The Descartes Prize 2001'.

The Descartes Prize is one of the activities supported under the European Commission's Fifth Framework Improving Human Potential Programme, within the Research Directorate Science and Society.

Finalists in 2001

On 26 November the Grand Jury convened to decide the winners of the 2001 prize. They were announced the following day at a high-profile award ceremony and gala lunch hosted at the Bibliotèque Solvay in Brussels.

The research put forward to enter the 2001 Descartes Prize reflects significant advances on an international scale applying expertise to matters that are of concern to us all. Contained within each project are workable solutions to some of the world's major health, safety, environment and energy issues.

Reining back the scourge of AIDS, conserving our precious ecosystems, maximising train safety, combating the misery of emphysema, harnessing the power of the sun, channelling brain waves to enhance further the lives of disabled people and enabling the pharmaceutical and agrochemical industries to benefit from widespread cost savings.

The shortlist of seven finalist projects involved 32 research teams located in at least 17 different countries. 2001 EU Descartes Prize of 1 million Euro was divided between 2 projects; one on AIDS and one on chemical catalysis. One of the finalists, Adaptive Brain Interfaces (ABI), was directly in the area of medical and biological engineering.

Adaptive Brain Interfaces (ABI)

In today's fast paced world, information and communication technologies are dramatically transforming our society. Access to new emerging technologies can be taken for granted. Unfortunately, not everyone can enjoy their benefits on equal terms. People with severe physical disabilities are practically excluded. But, what if they could communicate their wishes or control electronic appliances merely by thinking? This is promise of the ABI project that aims at augmenting human capabilities by enabling people to interact with computers through conscious control of their thoughts after a short training period.

The Team

Over the last years evidence has accumulated to show the possibility to analyse brainwaves on-line to derive information about the subjects' mental state that could then be mapped into some external action such as selecting a letter from a virtual keyboard or driving a robotics device. Both invasive procedures (that implant electrodes in the brain) and sophisticated brain imaging technologies (that require huge and expensive equipment) yield detailed information on the brain activity. An alternative is to measure electroencephalogram (EEG) signals from scalp electrodes that do not require invasive techniques. EEG signals, however, are hard to analyse on-line as the phenomena of interest are hidden in the background brain activity. This is particularly the case with spontaneous mental activity, where subjects make self-paced decisions (what mental task to concentrate on, how to accomplish it, and when to switch to the next) without having to wait for, or respond to, external cues. The challenge is to recognise, using a portable system, what the subject's mental state from on-line spontaneous EEG signals.

The core of ABI is a particular neural network classifier that analyses continuous variations of EEG rhythms over several cortical areas of the brain. The ABI project seeks to develop individual brain interfaces. The same system is not suitable for everybody, as no two people are identical, either physically or psychologically. The approach is based on a mutual learning process where the user and the brain interface are coupled together and adapt to each other. The neural network learns user-specific EEG patterns that describe the mental tasks desired, while the subject learns to think in a manner that enables the personal interface to better understand them. As a consequence, subjects master their personal ABI rapidly: they only need a few hours of training. Analysis of learned EEG patterns confirms that for a subject to operate satisfactorily his/her personal ABI, the latter must fit the individual features of the former. The user can concentrate on a wide range of mental states, from motor-related (e.g., imagination of limb movements) to cognitive tasks (e.g., completing mental operations involving awareness and judgement). Each mental state is associated to a simple command such as "select right item". This enables people to communicate using their brain activity, as the interface only requires users to be conscious of their thoughts and to concentrate sufficiently on the mental expression of the commands required to carry out the desired task. So, by composing command sequences (thoughts), the user can write messages, interact with games turn on appliances, or even guide a wheelchair. The brain-operated virtual keyboard and computer game have been shown publicly on different workshops and IT exhibitions. In the case of the virtual keyboard, during the live demonstrations the subject writes words or sentences suggested by the public. In some cases, several visitors have tried ABI and achieved good performances in less than 1 hour of training. This confirms the adaptive capabilities of ABI. These experiences demonstrate the excellent performance of our technology in rather extreme conditions as found in an exhibition area - that includes electromagnetic fields, ambient noise and people moving and talking in the vicinity.

The above-mentioned demonstrators illustrate the wide range of systems ABI can be linked to. Although the immediate application of ABI is to help physically impaired people by increasing their independence and facilitating access to the Information Society, the benefits of such a kind of interface are extensive even for able-bodied people. Independently of the concrete applications of brain interfaces (e.g., safety, health, education, virtual reality, etc.), ultimately they will lead to the development of truly adaptive interactive systems that, on the one side, augment human capabilities by giving the brain the possibility to develop new skills and, on the other side, make computer systems fit the pace and individual features of their owners rather than people conform to technology.

The team

For information

The Descartes Prize: www.cordis.lu/descartes
Adaptive Brain Interfaces (ABI): http://sta.jrc.it/abi