2012 Award announcement

Katerva is pleased to announce here the winners of the 2012 Katerva Award. The 51 Finalists competed to win recognition in ten categories, and the ten category winners are announced here. After final deliberations, the Katerva Award winner was chosen from these top ten. This year, for the first time, Katerva held the People's Choice Award from among all the Finalists; in a close race with over 3,500 votes cast altogether, both the winner and the runner up are mentioned here. Katerva congratulates all of the worthy entries for this year's Katerva Award, and extends special congratulations to the winners.

2012 Katerva Award Winner

Bioneedle Technologies Group

London, 30 January — Bioneedle Technologies Group is the winner of the 2012 Katerva Award. Although this project is only in the ideation stage, this technology has the possibility to grant vaccine access to more people than ever before and increase the global population's immunity to infectious disease. Bioneedles, “tiny, biodegradable mini-implants” come prefilled and contain vaccines in a thermally stable environment. The Bioneedle Technologies Group (bioneedle.com) is a project based in The Netherlands.

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2012 Katerva People's Choice Winner

Safe World for Women

Safe World for Women (www.asafeworldforwomen.org) The Safeworld International Foundation is a women-led NGO working with grassroots groups to promote women's empowerment amd sustainable development, tackle the root causes of poverty and oppression, and bring positive social and economic change at a global level. It is registered in England and Wales.

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2012 Katerva People's Choice: Honorable Mention

¡Échale! a tu casa

Honorable Mention goes to ¡Echale! a Tu Casa (www.echale.com.mx), an assisted self-build program that provides sustainable community development through social housing production. ¡Echale! A Tu casa (put your heart into your home) is commissioned by the Mexican National Social Housing Production Program to help people build their homes.

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Category Winners

Behavioral Change - Foldit

Foldit www.foldit.it/portal focuses on solving challenging biochemistry problems by building a symbiosis between computers and people—through interaction with a video game. Developed by the University of Washington.

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Economy - Water.Org's Water Credit

Water.org's WaterCredit (www.water.org/solutions/watercredit/) puts microfinance tools to work in the water and sanitation (watsan) sector. WaterCredit is the first comprehensive program of its kind that connects the microfinance and watsan communities to scale up access to credit for individual- and household-based watsan needs. Water.org is a worldwide project based in the US with staff in the US, India and Kenya.

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Ecosystem Conservation - Reef Check Foundation

Reef Check (www.reefcheck.org) is the world's largest reef monitoring network. The Reef Check Foundation is a nonprofit that started in Southern California in 1996 with a mission to empower local communities through grassroots research, conservation, and education to protect and rehabilitate reefs worldwide.

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Energy and Power - Center for Rice Husk Energy Technology

Center for Rice Husk Energy Technology (www.crhet.com) Discarded in heaps along roadsides and riverbanks, rice husks are considered waste in many countries heavily dependent on rice as a staple product. However, the Center for Rice Husk Energy Technology (CRHET) is challenging this notion by creating a rise husk gasifier stove that uses rice husks to provide clean and low-cost fuel. Gas produced from just one kilogram of husk can generate an equivalent of 1,920 kilocaleries of energy. The CRHET Office is at the College of Engineering, Central Luzon State University, Science City of Munoz, The Philippines

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Food Security - Backpack Farm Agriculture Program

The Backpack Farm Agriculture Program (BPF) (www.backpackfarm.com) in Kenya is an internationally recognized social enterprise aggregating packages of “green” farming inputs and conservation training exclusively to smallholder “commercial” farmers with 2-5 acres of land earning their primary income from horticulture production.

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Gender Equality - Safe World for Women

Safe World for Women (People's choice winner, see description above)

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Human Development - Bioneedle Technologies Group

BioNeedle Technologies Group (Katerva Award Winner, see description above)

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Materials and Resources - Pasteurization Technology Group

The Pasteurization Technology Group (www.pastechgroup.com) seeks to revolutionize the disinfection of wastewater using a patented “two-for-one” technology, eliminating toxic chemicals and intensive electricity usage in the process. Based in California, it has partnerships in North America, Asia, and South America.

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Transportation - Mitsubishi Air Lubrication System for Shipping

The Mitsubishi Air-Lubrication System (MALS) (Technology Review (PDF) developed by the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Corporation, Japan, is a technology designed to reduce the skin-friction resistance on the hull of a ship by sendng air to the bottom of the hull to create a layer of air bubbles between the hull and seawater.

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Urban Design - AguaClara

The AguaClara Program (www.aguaclara.cee.cornell.edu) is a research program at Cornell University that produces engineering designs for reliable and sustainable municipal-scale water treatment plants.

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