The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) celebrated its 10th anniversary this week by announcing the winners of the EIT Awards 2018.
The annual EIT innovation forum, INNOVEIT, took place in Budapest with more than 350 attendees including Tibor Navracsics, the European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport; and MEP Lambert van Nistelrooij. 38 nominees, 40 per cent of them women, competed for the awards, which recognise excellence in innovation in the fields of energy, health, food and raw materials.
The EIT Change Award
A €20,000 award for graduates of EIT education programmes, the Change Award went to Simone Accornero. As CEO of FlexiDAO, Simone presides over software which combines traceability with transparency in automated data processing.
The EIT Innovators Award
The €50,000 Innovators Award recognises teams with high impact products and services. This year’s award went to the team led by Ioannis Tamanas for their revolutionary work in Alzheimer’s prediction software.
The EIT Venture Award
Recognising successful startups with a reward of €50,000, the Venture Award was presented to Bieke van Gorp, Chief Business Development Officer and co-founder at Qompium NV, for the development of the FibriCheck mobile app. FibriCheck enables its users to detect and prevent atrial fibrillation.
The EIT Woman Award
The €20,000 Woman Award for outstanding women innovators was given to Isabel Hoffman, CEO of TellSpec Ltd. This year TellSpec developed an effective and convenient sensor to detect the quality and freshness of raw white fish, as well as detecting fraudulent levels of added water in fish.
The EIT Public Award
With the public’s top innovation decided by an open vote, thousands of votes across Europe awarded the prize to Laura Soucek, founder and CEO of Peptomyc S.L., which has produced a new cancer treatment option in the form of a peptide solution.
Aside from the Public Award, each award was determined by an international jury.
