Telenor awards an annual Nordic research prize in the telecommunications field, in order to support Nordic research and development, which is of great significance for the formation of the information society. The award is worth NOK 250,000, and was given for the first time in 1997. For 2005 Telenor and the jury has agreed on the following theme for the prize:

"Enabling technologies and communication based value added services for the home, leisure and professional environments".

The research cited could include aspects of technology, services, user acceptability and business opportunities. The significance of the theme for Telenor is that personalised services and universal access adapted to available terminals, will be a vision for the future development of our industry.

Candidates from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden have been nominated for the prize. Among them the Jury unanimously chose professor Ramjee Prasad at the University of Aalborg, to be the winner this year.

Professor Prasad is a world-class researcher with a long history of impressive merits, both academic and organisational. His record with respect to lectures given, courses, tutorials and papers is impressive. He is the author or co-author of 16 books, and has a list of more than 500 publications. And he has been an active creator of academic and industrial networks internationally.

In particular for the theme of this year, Prasad has been one early leader to formulate a vision around Personal Area Networks. This is judged to be key concept for flexible access to multimedia and personalized services. His work has in general had significant impact on technology development, constituency building, concept formation, and future impact on applications is expected. He is a leader in an important but still formative field - 4G mobile communications. Presently he is coordinating the MAGNET project on personal networks for support of user's professional and private activities, which is the larges Integrated Project under the EU 6th framework programme.

Professor Prasad has been very active in dissemination of research findings, through project management and organizing and participation in international seminars. Besides his own work he has made a great effort to promote research in Aalborg, for example by organizing international programs involving both universities and industries.

Professor Prasad was born in India in 1946 and has worked in various domains of telecommunications, in India, Tanzania, Netherlands and Denmark. He has been with the University of Aalborg since 1999, where he is currently the director of Center for TeleInFrastructure (CTIF).
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The members of the Jury are:

Vice President Berit Svendsen (leader), Telenor Nordic Fixed
Professor Peter T. Kirstein, University College London
Ekonomie Dr. Erik Bohlin, Chalmers University of Technology
Associate professor Mads Christoffersen, The Technical University of Denmark
Professor Gunnar Stette, The Technical University of Norway,
Professor Olli Martikainen, The University of Oulu, Finland