March 20, 2002
EMBARGOED TO 6:00PM WEDNESDAY 20 MARCH 2002
A
Japanese scientist will be honoured with the first awarding of the Ebbe Nielsen
Prize at a ceremony in Canberra today.
The
Prize, worth $US35,000, honours the memory of CSIRO’s Dr Ebbe Nielsen, who died
in March last year, and his role in forming the international Global
Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and in stimulating international biodiversity
informatics and biosystematics research. It is the world's first award
specifically designed to recognize applications of informatics research to
biodiversity.
The
award ceremony is being held in conjunction with the fourth GBIF Governing
Board meeting.
“The
Prize is to be awarded annually to a promising researcher,” says Dr John
Curran, Chair of the GBIF Science Committee.
“The
first Prize winner is Dr Nozomi Ytow, Assistant Professor at the University of
Tskuba in Japan,” says Dr Curran. “Dr Ytow is combining biosystematics and
biological diversity informatics research in an exciting and novel way.”
“His
work challenges the way we handle biodiversity information and offers the
possibility of dramatically speeding up the way we share this information
around the world,” he says.
“It is a pleasure to be able to make this first
award of the Ebbe Nielsen Prize to Dr Ytow in CSIRO in Canberra,” says Dr Christoph Hauser, Chair of the GBIF Governing
Board
“This appropriately recognises Dr Nielsen’s
tremendous contribution on the world stage in raising awareness at a political
level about the importance of biodiversity informatics.”
Dr
Ytow will use the Prize to travel to key research centres around the world to
share and test his novel ideas on data-basing the vast quantities of biological
information held in natural history collections around the world.
………more
The
Ebbe Nielsen Prize will be awarded to Dr Ytow by Hon Peter McGauran MP,
Minister for Science on behalf of GBIF at a ceremony commencing at 6:00 pm at
Discovery Centre Lecture Theatre, CSIRO, Black Mountain, Canberra. This will be
immediately followed by a lecture on his work by Dr Ytow, commencing 6:30 pm.
Media are invited to attend and interview Dr Ytow.
More
information:
Ms Stephney
Bergl, CSIRO
Entomology 02
6246 4037
Mr Malcolm
Robertson, CSIRO
Entomology 02
6246 4040
0408
627 685