Seven Teams from U.S. Universities Among Winners of International Engineering Contest - DaimlerChrysler and UNESCO award a total of 300,000 euros in prize money STUTTGART, PARIS and BERLIN, May 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- On Monday evening in Berlin, Germany, DaimlerChrysler and UNESCO presented the Mondialogo Engineering Award with a total of 300,000 euros in prize money. An international jury awarded the prizes to 21 project teams from 28 countries. In this unique worldwide contest, international project teams worked together over the past year to produce engineering proposals to reduce poverty and promote sustainable development in developing countries. (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20020212/DCXLOGO ) The Mondialogo Engineering Award is a DaimlerChrysler and UNESCO initiative aimed at promoting intercultural dialogue among young engineers around the world. The initiative calls on students from industrialized and developing countries to work together on proposals for sustainable engineering applications to aid developing countries. More than 1,700 young engineers and students from 79 nations registered for the contest, forming 412 international teams. A distinguished international jury assessed project ideas for sustainability, feasibility and quality of intercultural dialogue within the project group. Among the prize-winners are seven teams from U.S. universities -- the highest representation from any country. Each team received an award of approximately $18,000. -- Colorado School of Mines, Division of Engineering with Universidad Tecnologica Centroamericana in Honduras; Project title: "Investigation of appropriate water and waste management technologies for cities with developing countries." -- Colorado State University, Engineers without Borders and Engines and Energy Conservation Laboratory, with Tribhuvan University in Nepal; Project: "Lighting up the Nepalese Villages." -- Lehigh University, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering with Negnal Engineering College in India; Project title: "Providing Arsenic-free water in remote villages in West Bengal, India." -- Michigan Tech University and Sustainable Futures Institute and Nelson Mandela School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and Southern University and A&M College, with Partido State University in the Philippines; project: "Development of appropriate and sustainable construction materials." -- University of Colorado at Boulder, Engineers without Borders, and University of Wisconsin, Department of Engineering, with University of Ruhengeri and University of Butare in Rwanda; project: "Solutions for Muramba, Rwanda: Rebuilding after a 'Time of Running'." -- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Engineers without Borders, with Orissa University and Janannath Institute of Technology in Russia; Project title: "Biodiesel development in rural Russia." -- University of Texas - El Paso with Tongji University in China; Project title: "Leapfrogging Urban Transportation Systems in Shanghai, China." The aim of Mondialogo is to encourage dialogue between young people around the world through the activities of the school and engineering contests and through the Internet portal. This cooperation is intended to develop understanding, tolerance and friendship between people with different cultural, religious and linguistic backgrounds. The international jury for the Mondialogo Engineering Award consisted of a panel of distinguished members including: Prof. Peggy Oti-Boateng (Director of the Technology Consultancy Center at Kwame Nkrumah University, Ghana), Prof. Gulsun Saglamer (Professor and former Rector of the Technical University Istanbul, Turkey), Prof. Shirley Malcom, USA, (Head of the Directorate for Education and Human Resources Programs of the American Association for the Advancement of Science), Prof. Lee-Yee Cheong from Malaysia (President of the World Federation of Engineering Organizations, WFEO) and Prof. Wei Yu (Director of the Research Center for Learning Sciences, Southeast University, China). Chairmen of the jury are Prof. Marcio Barbosa (Brazil), Deputy Director-General of UNESCO, and Prof. Herbert Kohler (Germany), Chief Environmental Officer and Head of Research in the Body and Powertrain Unit of DaimlerChrysler AG. The ambassadors of this worldwide initiative are Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho; Swedish author Henning Mankell; and Shen Che, Chairman of the "China Folklore Photographic Association" and President of the "Humanity Photo Awards". Jurgen E. Schrempp, Chairman of the Board of Management at DaimlerChrysler AG and Koichiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO are the patrons of Mondialogo. The Mondialogo Engineering Award is part of the broader Mondialogo initiative, developed by DaimlerChrysler and UNESCO which includes a worldwide contest aimed at promoting intercultural dialogue between secondary school students, called the Mondialogo School Contest. It also maintains an internet portal in four languages, which features a magazine dedicated to intercultural topics. Further information and image material can be obtained at http://www.mondialogo.org/. http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20020212/DCXLOGODATASOURCE: DaimlerChrysler CONTACT: Florian Martens of DaimlerChrysler AG, +1-212-909-9062, or fax +1-212-909-9065, ; or Sue Williams of UNESCO, +33-01-45-68-17-06, or fax +33-01-45-68-56-59, Web site: http://www.mondialogo.org/ http://www.daimlerchrysler.com/

Copyright