CiRA Director Shinya Yamanaka has received the 2012 Millennium Technology Grand Prize by the Technology Academy Finland during an award ceremony held in Helsinki on June 13. Linux operating system inventor Linus Torvalds also won the Grand Prize.

Yamanaka said; "It is a great honor to be named as one of the Grand Prize winner of the 2012 Millennium Technology Prize - one of the world's most important science and technology awards. I am not accepting this on behalf of myself alone. The discovery of induced pluripotent stem cells could not have been achieved without tremendous efforts by students and technicians in my laboratory."

"My mission now is to advance iPS cell research in cooperation with many researchers around the world and bring the technology to medicine as early as possible. I will continue to work hard to achieve our goals of developing new drugs and medical treatments to intractable diseases by using iPS cell technology."

For more information about the prize, please visit http://www.technologyacademy.fi/