The 51th Annual R&D 100 Banquet and Awards Presentation, identifying and honoring the top 100 technology products of the year, took place at the Renaissance Orlando Hotel at Seaworld, Orlando on Nov. 7, 2013. The awards are presented annually in recognition of exceptional new products, processes, materials, or software that were developed throughout the world and introduced into the market the previous year.
Past winners have included sophisticated testing equipment, innovative new materials, chemistry breakthroughs, biomedical products, consumer items, and high-energy physics. The day-long events included an exhibition of winning technologies, a formal cocktail reception, and a black-tie banquet and awards presentation.
ITRI (Industrial Technology Research Institute), one of the world’s leading high-tech research and development institutions in Taiwan, accepted three 2013 R&D 100 Awards. ITRI was selected as a winner for the sixth consecutive year, collecting awards for the following advanced technologies in their respective categories:
- iAT Technology (Electrical Device category), one of the first see-through display and airtouch input technologies for computers, wearable computers and mobile devices that allows a user’s hand to be free of any physical device such as a touchpad or keyboard for touch input.
- ButyFix™ (Energy Technology category), the first carbon-negative bio-butanol production technology that uses cellulosic feedstock to produce advanced biofuel.
- FluxMerge (Mechanical Systems category), the only technology that reduces air gap magnetic flux leakage in the magnetic circuit path of all electric machines.
Since 1963, the R&D 100 Awards have identified revolutionary technologies newly introduced to the market. Many of these have become household names, helping shape everyday life for many Americans. These include the flashcube (1965), the automated teller machine (1973), the halogen lamp (1974), the fax machine (1975), the liquid crystal display (1980), the Kodak Photo CD (1991), the Nicoderm anti-smoking patch (1992), Taxol anticancer drug (1993), lab on a chip (1996), and HDTV (1998). More recent breakthroughs that have earned R&D 100 Awards include next-generation magnetic resonance imaging machines, laser-based metal-forming tools, and the building blocks for fusion experiments.
The 52nd Annual R&D 100 Banquet and Awards Presentation, honoring the 2014 winners, will take place at the Bellagio Hotel, Las Vegas, NV, on Friday, November 7, 2014.
