The winners of the INVENTA – Caixa/INPI Award were announced February 24th at the awards ceremony that took place at Caixa Geral de Depósitos headquarters in Lisbon.

YDreams was shortlisted for the INVENTA.COM – Future and Communications award for their Virtual Sightseeing patent. The overall grand winner for the evening was Coimbra University for their “Nouveaux derives de porphyrine, notamment chlorines et/ou leurs applications en therapie photodynamique” patent.

For a complete list of winners click HERE.

About INPI
INPI, the National Institute for Industrial Property, was constituted in 1976; their mission is to protect and promote Industrial Property on both a national and international level and to serve as a mediator between Portugal and international organizations, where Portugal is a member state.

Non-profit association, Associação Salvador, is promoting the Ser Capaz Research & Technology Award to further research work in psychomotor rehabilitation. Project collaborators include YDreams, faculty from Universidade do Algarve, and sponsors Semapa and BES.

The public awards ceremony will take place at 18h30 on the 21st of February, at Espaço BES Arte & Finança, in Lisbon’s Marquês de Pombal Square.

Associação Salvador defends and fights for the rights and interests of disabled people, with special emphasis on fostering integration into society, promoting handicap accessibility, road safety awareness, and research and technology.

Well aware of the importance of research and how it impacts their cause, the Association is striving to stimulate research in the field of psycho-motor rehabilitation by promoting the “Ser Capaz – Research & Technology” award.

The prize, awarded annually, finances projects for the development of products, instruments, technologies, methodologies, equipment or technical systems that prevent, compensate for, or serve the special needs of people with motor deficiencies.

António Câmara, YDreams CEO, Salvador Mendes de Almeida, Associação Salvador’s Founder and President and Fernando Lobo, a professor at Universidade do Algarve, comprised the jury, which elected the following winners from amongst the various entries submitted in the awards first edition in 2010.

A first prize of 7.000€ went to João Pedro Silva Leite and João Pedro Ferreira for their “Walk HD” Project. The project consists of a prosthetic device that ‘grows’ at the same rate as child amputees, thereby cutting back on the number of times these children need to change prostheses during their childhood years.

Two Honorable Mentions of 1.500€ each were also attributed to Luis Alexandre and Diogo Correia for their “Aid for Reaching Objects” device, and to Flávio Rosa Soares for his “Simon Project”, a wheelchair activated system that automatically turns lights off and on as the person leaves or enters a room.

Ynvisible, created in January 2010 as our first spin-out company, for the development of new technologies in printed electronics, will list its shares on the First Quotation Board (Open Market) of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange starting February 9th, 2011.

The initial stages of Ynvisible’s technology development date back to 2005, when YDreams and research groups from the Faculty of Sciences and Technology at the New University of Lisbon (FCT/UNL) started a joint research initiative aimed at developing electrochromic displays on a variety of surfaces. This partnership is still active and going strong, particularly with FCT/UNL’s Photochemistry and Supramolecular Chemistry Group, led by Prof. Fernando Pina.

Ynvisible’s goal is to become a world-leading developer of electrochromic displays which may be printed on any surface or object, including paper, plastic, glass, ceramics, wood-based materials and cork. Ynvisible is targeting the mass production of electrochromic displays that are printed, flexible, transparent, low power, sunlight-readable and low cost.

For more information, or to read the company’s complete news release and extended summary, check out there website at: http://www.ynvisible.com/

On this end, we’ll be sure to fill you in all future developments!