MMV Wins Tim Berners-Lee's Open Data Innovation Award
MMV has won the Open Data Innovation Award, one of Five Open Data Awards presented by Tim Berners-Lee's Open Data Institute (ODI) and hosted at Bloomberg London. The awards presented On Thursday, 9 July 2015, were in recognition of innovation and excellence in open data. MMV was one of 17 organizations shortlisted in the Innovation category.
MMV's Malaria Box was considered a prime example of excellence in open data innovation. The Malaria Box is a physical box of 400 compounds provided free of charge to researchers who wish to develop new medicines for malaria asking only that the results be published in the public domain to help continue a virtual cycle of research. This open knowledge sharing is pivotal to MMV's mission.
"Malaria remains a massive problem for many developing nations, a problem that must be shared to be solved and the sharing of knowledge and expertise is fundamental to achieving success" said David Reddy, MMV's CEO. "We are grateful to UK DFID for nominating us for this award; and it was an honour to be presented this award by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the worldwide web."
Other winners:
The Publisher Award went to The Greater London Authority for opening up more than 600 datasets in 2010 for use to build new tools.
The Business Award went to Open Corporates, who are using open data to provide analysis and understanding of how corporations operate.
The Individual Champion Award went to Mo McRoberts for encouraging the BBC and others to appreciate the potential that open data can have, and getting them to open it up.
The Social Impact Award was won by BudgIT, for new methods of communication to get information out to rural areas to help the public feedback to governments and improve understanding of how public funds are spent.