ITRI honored at R&D 100 Awards presentation ceremony

Washington, Nov. 12 (CNA) Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) stood out at the ceremony honoring the winners of the 48th R&D 100 Awards in the United States Thursday by being the only institute to capture three top prizes. It was the third consecutive year Taiwan's leading high-tech research and development institute had been selected by R&D magazine as one of the R&D 100 award winners. The three technologies that were selected among 2010's 100 most significant innovations impressed members of the annual event's panel of judges, said chief judge Tim Studt after the ceremony. He said he was convinced the world would change in the future because of the ITRI innovations. The awarded innovations include a non-toxic fire-resistant material named REDDEX; a 3D display technology called i2/3DW with integral 2D and 3D for the naked eye; and a Flexible Universal Plane for Displays (FlexUPD) -- a technology that enables the mass commercialization of paper-thin, low-cost flexible flat displays for electronic products. ITRI Display Technology Center Director-General Chen Jang-lin and two colleagues received the awards on behalf of the institute. In an interview with the Central News Agency, Chen said that although it was a great honor for the ITRI to win the awards, there was a great deal of sweat and hard work behind the glory. For example, Chen said, their research team had suffered failure and frustration in 64 experiments before succeeding in inventing the FlexUPD technology. FlexUPD can be used to produce flexible computers, flexible E-books and flexible cell phone monitors. In the future, computers and cell phones will no longer be fragile and can be rolled up and put in cloth pockets, he said. It is estimated that the new technology will create commercial opportunities worth US$5 billion for Taiwan by 2015, Chen noted. (By Jorge Liu and Elizabeth Hsu) enditem/ls

ITRI honored at R&D 100 Awards presentation ceremony Washington, Nov. 12 (CNA) Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) stood out at the ceremony honoring the winners of the 48th R&D 100 Awards in the United States Thursday by being the only institute to capture three top prizes.