Szeged, Hungary, 1st December, 1997 - Cygron Research & Development, Ltd. is pleased to announce that its data mining software, DataScope is a Winner of the European IT Prize 1997. 319 applications arrived from 26 European countries and Israel. The Jury consisted of industry and university leaders of 16 European countries and its task was to select 25 Winners. The most important selection criteria were novelty, technical excellence and marketability.

Cygron is a software research and development company focusing on artificial intelligence (neural networks, genetic and ID3 algorithms, fuzzy sets), Executive Information Systems (data visualization, data mining, forecasting) and decision support (preference and utility-based multicriteria decisions, group decisions, optimization techniques). The mission of the company is to apply the latest scientific results in practical life, hiding complex algorithms behind user-friendly interfaces. It has developed software applications that allow its customers to save money on their purchase commitments, to understand their customer data, and to optimize their operations.

DataScope enables its user to visually analyze the contents of an arbitrary database and extract the knowledge hidden behind the numbers. It uses special visualization techniques to support human thinking and intuition in data analysis. It allows easy trend, pattern and exception recognition, examination of many points of view simultaneously, translation of numbers to subjective opinions and data query without any commands or formulas being required.

The prize amount is 5,000 ECU. The Awards Ceremony took place during the European Information Technology Conference in Brussels on 24-26 November 1997. This three-day event is organised by the Esprit programme and is one of the largest European gatherings of international IT experts. Mr. Jacques Santer, President of the European Commission personally congratulated the Winners. The conference and the Awards Ceremony had an intensive media coverage.

Cygron exhibited the product during the conference. The exhibition stand was visited by numerous conference attendants as well as many European Commission Officials. Further key events of the conference were the Winners lunch and reception with the European Commission Executives, press conference and a meeting with the Winners of the previous year. The product description was given to all conference participants and another 10,000 copies would be distributed all over Europe. Cygron is authorized to use the European IT Prize Winner qualification and the corresponding logo on its materials.

This prize is a great honor for the Hungarian IT industry, since there are 3 Hungarian companies among the 25 Winners, placing Hungary into the second place behind France (5 Winners) in Europe.

For more information on the European IT Prize, please visit http://www.it-prize.org.