THE JOURNAL REPORT: TECHNOLOGY
DOW JONES REPRINTS
The Best and The Brightest
By GEORGE ANDERS
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
November 15, 2004; Page R1
Robert Drost has been putting things together in unexpected ways since high school, when he got hold of the confiscated wreckage of drug dealers' planes and reassembled tangled metal shards so he could learn about aircraft design.
Today, Dr. Drost is a top scientist at Sun Microsystems Inc.'s research labs in Menlo Park, Calif. There he helps design future generations of computer chips. Instead of accepting classic elements of chip design, Dr. Drost is challenging one of the most basic assumptions of the semiconductor business: the belief that chips need to be wired together so they can share data.
Dr. Drost and a small team of Sun researchers have developed a wireless approach, in which two chips less than a hair's width apart "ping" data back and forth through the air. Physical connections aren't necessary. It's a daring technique that hasn't yet been proved in mass-produced computers. But early tests of this approach, called proximity communication, are promising enough that Sun says it could bring a tenfold or even 100-fold improvement in computing speed.
This proximity-computing project has emerged as the overall Gold winner in The Wall Street Journal's 2004 Technology Innovation Awards competition. Innovators world-wide were eligible for consideration in a dozen categories, ranging from medical technology to software, security, the environment and transportation.
Judges chose Gold, Silver and Bronze winners overall, as well as a winner in each of the 12 industry categories, along with 25 runners-up or honorable mentions.
Applications initially were screened by Wall Street Journal editors, who chose 120 semifinalists. At that point, a panel of expert judges from organizations such as Siemens AG, the Cleveland Clinic, Agilent Technologies Inc. and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology rated each entry. These independent judges ultimately produced the winners' list.
In interviews afterward, judges said three factors were most crucial in guiding their selections. First, they looked for projects that addressed big challenges, for which new solutions would have wide impact. Second, judges such as Paul Vais, a venture capitalist at Apax Partners, insisted that top contenders offer a truly novel solution, rather than just a modest improvement over existing practices.
Finally, judges such as Anthony Komaroff, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, insisted that entries be supported by rigorous data on their real-world performance. For him and fellow judges, bold but unsubstantiated claims of potential weren't good enough.
Winning the Silver medal overall, as well as first place in the medical category, was Given Imaging Ltd. of Yoqneam, Israel, for a tiny camera that can be swallowed by patients. The device, known as the PillCam, was conceived in the 1990s by Gaddi Idan, a one-time missile developer in the Israeli military.
Mr. Idan, a lifelong inventor, suspected that advanced missile video technology could be used in nonmilitary settings. His interest heightened when he traveled to Boston and got to know a gastroenterologist who lived near his home. Once Mr. Idan learned that doctors lacked a good way to produce images of the entire digestive tract, he set out to develop something better.
It took years to get the technical details sorted out. But now thousands of patients are swallowing PillCams to help their doctors assess the risks of cancer and other gastrointestinal diseases. The latest innovation uses the technology to specifically target the esophagus.
The Bronze winner overall was InSightec Image Guided Treatment Ltd. of Tirat Carmel, Israel. It has developed ExAblate 2000, a nonsurgical way to destroy tumors by focusing ultrasound waves on the target. Last month, the technology was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in treating uterine fibroid tissue in premenopausal women.
Insightech Image Guided Treatment Ltd.
InSightec's chief executive officer, Jacob Vortman, says ExAblate 2000 can aim ultrasound beams with a precision of one millimeter or less. That lets the device wipe out diseased tissue while sparing healthy areas nearby. He calls this a "virtual scalpel" and says he is excited about its potential in addressing other conditions usually treated by surgery.
Here are details on this year's winning entries in all 12 industry categories.
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THE JUDGES
The following served as judges for The Wall Street Journal's Technology Innovation Awards. All judges refrained from voting on any entries in which their companies or organizations may have had an interest.
Markus Bayegan
Chief Technology Officer, ABB Ltd.
Thomas Ganswindt
Member of the Corporate Executive Committee, Siemens AG
Diane Greene
Co-Founder and President, VMware Inc.
Anthony Komaroff
Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Editor in Chief, Harvard Health Publications
Richard S. Lang
Chairman of the Department of General Internal Medicine, The Cleveland Clinic
Editor in Chief, Cleveland Clinic Men's Health Advisor
Pedro Nueno
Professor of Entrepreneurship and Head of the Department of Entrepreneurship, IESE Business School, Spain
Jane Royston
Branco Weiss Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
President, CreateSwitzerland
Darlene Solomon
Vice President and Director, Agilent Laboratories
Kenny Tang
Founder and CEO, Oxbridge Capital
Paul Vais
Partner, Apax Partners
Sophie V. Vandebroek
Chief Engineer, Xerox Corp.
William Webb
Head of Research and Development, U.K. Office of Communications
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Materials and Other Base Technologies
Startech Environmental Corp. won for developing a recycling system that destroys wastes by subjecting them to superheated, ionized gases, known as plasma. Temperatures inside one of Startech's disposal chambers can run as high as 30,000 degrees Fahrenheit. At such temperatures, the chemical bonds that make up the wastes are broken apart. What remains are basic chemical elements.
Startech, based in Wilton, Conn., says its technology can help generate clean energy and destroy hazardous wastes. Judges said they were impressed by the potential of this technology, though they noted that it has been talked about for many years and has proved harder to implement on a large scale than proponents may have expected.
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