Telenor's Research Award 2003 goes to Dr. Haakon Bryhni

Each year Telenor selects a scope for the award in agreement with the internationally composed award committee. The subject for 2003 is "Technologies and systems enabling new communication services". In their grounds for selection the committee write: "This year's winner has proved himself a pioneer in seeing the opportunities of Mobile IP and the new radio technologies - at a time when the ruling paradigm for broadband mobile services was UMTS. He has been, and is, extremely active in academia as well as in business. At this intersection he has shown great ability for combining basic theory with a practical and commercial realisation of his ideas."

Bryhni's work comprises aspects like broadband, nomadic services, security and quality, and enables a host of new applications. Examples are:

• The user may have nomadic and wireless access to business services in the same way as through fixed broadband networks at work and elsewhere;

• The user may have access to the same user experience of services, regardless of type of radio-based network;

• The user's connection with his company's existing VPN solution may be automatically secured when communication is carried through public (wireless) networks;

• The user may have service quality adjusted to the needs and qualities of the relevant networks that the user is connected to in various situations.

After completing his doctorate Haakon Bryhni started his career by setting up his own company, and he is now technical director of Birdstep Technology ASA. He is a much sought-after lecturer and speaker and has excellently contributed to informing and starting a dialogue on the new concepts he has been working with.

"Dr Haakon Bryhni was before his time in leading the way into an area which is today in rapid progress. It will probably pave the way for services that we will take for granted as easily as we do e-mail and mobile telephony today," according to Berit Svendsen, head of the jury and CTO of Telenor.

This year is the seventh time Telenor's Nordic research prize is awarded. Previous winners have been Dr. Gisle Bjøntegaard, Telenor (1997); Professor Stephen Pink, University of Luleå (1998); The Telepathology Group in Tromsø (1999); Professor Peter Andrekson, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg (2000); Professor Jon Bing, University of Oslo (2001); and Professor Christian Jensen, University of Ålborg (2002). In 1997 an additional prize of NOK 50,000 was awarded to Birger Møller-Pedersen, Dag Belsnes and Øistein Haugen for their work on defining SDL92 at the Norwegian Computing Center.

Contacts:

Dr Haakon Bryhni, Birdstep Technology ASA, tel. (+47) 24 13 47 00, mobile (+47) 952 23 048

e-mail: haakon.bryhni@birdstep.com