PII won the Future Internet Award for the best European Future Internet initiative that is currently running and nearing completion. PII coordinator Anastasius Gavras from Eurescom received the award on behalf of the project at an official ceremony within the closing plenary of the Future Internet Assembly (FIA) in Ghent on 17 December 2010.
The judging panel consisted of six senior representatives from the ICT industry and from politics. The panel had given PII and StratAG (“Best New Initiative that is about to start”) the highest values on ten criteria, including, for example, innovative use of technologies, inclusion and excellence. The Future Internet Award has been organised by the ceFIMS Coordination Action in order to acknowledge projects of great potential to advance the Future Internet and innovate products and services.
PII, the Pan-European Laboratory Infrastructure Implementation project, is part of the FIRE intiative on Future Internet Research and Experimentation. The FIRE concept and especially PII are widely recognised beyond the boundaries of Europe. Recently, the Canadian research programme CANARIE launched a similar testbed federation concept, explicitly referring to PII.
More details can be found at http://initiative.future-internet.eu/news/view/article/first-future-internet-award-goes-to-pii-and-stratag.html