I have no way of knowing if one work was inspired by the first work, or if both works were inspired by the thousands of people around the world doing work on FTIR reflected infrared light. There was a lot of inspiration at that time on this subject.
Billions of people in the world are looking at the same things and having the same moments of inspiration. History is full of such examples of simultaneous invention. And history is just as full of people using one piece of work as a jumping off point for the next evolution.
Awards are different than patents, an object can be awarded because it has been entered into a competition and judged to be notable. Amount of funding is not related to the quality of the idea, it is the quality of the sales job.
You can probably take comfort in knowing that the world is not looking for transparent glass keyboards with no tactile response.
On to the next idea!