Among applicants from nine countries, Judit Kis, a journalist at Forbes, received the regional grand prize of the Siemens Media Award.
The regional Siemens Media Award prizes were presented on May 23 at a truly special venue, the control tower of Vienna Airport. From among the applicants and entries from nine countries, the international professional jury selected as the best this year the article by Judit Kis, a journalist at Forbes and winner of the Hungarian grand prize for the second time, entitled Hungarian success shows what AI can offer agriculture.
The report presents the operation of Proofminder, a Hungarian AI-supported machine vision technology platform used on four continents. Proofminder helps farmers see every plant stem, leaf, and possible disease on their land, allowing them to intervene in a targeted manner.
With this, Judit Kis also won a trip for two to the Salzburg Festival, where, in addition to the artistic content, they can also take a look behind the scenes and get a closer look at the technologies behind the stage.
The other two prizes in the media competition were awarded to Jan Brož, a journalist at the Czech newspaper Hospodářské noviny, and Rafał Pikuła, a journalist at the Polish technology portal Spider's Web. Brož received recognition for his article presenting the operation of electricity markets and the Czech company Second Foundation, which deals with algorithmic electricity trading, while Pikuła analyzed the impact of artificial intelligence on search engines in his award-winning article.
Winners of the regional Siemens Media Award 2025 (from left to right): Rafał Pikuła, Judit Kis and Jan Brož. Photo: Markus Schieder // ©Siemens
For the first, Hungarian round of the competition, entries could once again be submitted under the motto “Technology with purpose”, with media content presenting the role of technology in everyday life. In Hungary, the independent jury evaluated 42 entries from 17 applicants and awarded five entries, which also advanced to the international competition.
Here, the international jury – which also included Gyöngyi Sági, the Hungarian founder and editor-in-chief of digitrendi.hu – selected the best from more than 100 entries from nine Central and Eastern European countries (Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Poland, Hungary, Serbia, Slovakia, and Slovenia). After the award ceremony, the shortlisted applicants could celebrate by attending the long-established Viennese journalists’ event, the Concordia Ball.
There have also been examples of Hungarian success in Siemens’ regional competition in previous years: in 2023, László Bagi, also a Forbes journalist, brought home the international prize for second place with his article entitled The garbage trucks with green license plates won’t wake you up, while in 2024, Virág Zákányi was shortlisted with her article entitled Therapy in VR glasses, published on the GyártásTrend website.
Judit Kis was a journalist at MTI’s Economic Editorial Department between 2008 and 2019, where she primarily covered the world of work and environmental topics. In 2010, she won the Junior Prima Award. After her career at MTI, as a freelance journalist, her articles were mainly published by Magyar Mezőgazdaság Kiadó and Növekedés.hu. She has been a journalist at Forbes since 2021 and is currently a senior staff writer, and in 2024 she already won the Hungarian grand prize of the Siemens Media Award once.