October 08, 2009
Negroponte to Receive Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service
Founder of One Laptop Per Child Initiative will be honored in November
The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars of the Smithsonian Institution will present the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service to Nicholas Negroponte at a dinner to be held on November 19, 2009, at the Fairmont Copley Hotel in Boston. Negroponte is well known as the founder of MIT's Architecture Machine Group and co-creator (with Jerome Wiesner) of the MIT Media Lab.
According to the Woodrow Wilson International Center: "Professor Nicholas Negroponte has combined his knowledge, technical expertise, and humanitarian spirit to empower the children of developing nations, equipping them with the computer resources necessary to advance their opportunities. He is the Founder and Chairman of One Laptop Per Child, a project that provides low-cost, low-power, and highly efficient laptops to disenfranchised children across the globe. Since its inception, more than two million children have received laptops. He has also been instrumental in the creation and directing of the MIT Media Laboratory, a research center focused exclusively on study and experimentation with future forms of human communication, including several programs specific to technology and education in underdeveloped nations."
The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, established by the U.S. Congress in 1968 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., is the living, national memorial to the United States' 28th president. The Center is one of three American institutions (along with the National Gallery of Art and the Kennedy Center) created by congressional statute to perform a national mission within the Smithsonian Institution and is governed by its own independent Board of Trustees appointed by the U.S. President. A nonpartisan institution supported by public and private funds, the Center explores national and global issues through free, open, and informed dialogue.
