Rocío Arroyo, CEO of AMADIX, among the winners of the Capital of Innovation and Women Innovator awards.

The European Innovation Council (EIC) has revealed the winners of its annual innovation awards, with prizes going to the cities of Métropole Aix-Marseille Provence and Haarlem, as well as six leading women innovators. The prizes were announced by Mariya Gabriel, Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, during the EIC’s two-day summit, taking place until tomorrow.

EU Prize for Women Innovators

Three winners of the EU Prize for Women Innovators will each receive a €100 000 cash prize:

• Rocío Arroyo (Spain), co-founder and CEO of AMADIX, a company providing personalized medicine solutions for cancer diagnosis.
• Dr Ciara Clancy (Ireland), founder and CEO of Beats Therapeutics, a company developing technology solutions to tackle the mobility symptoms associated with Parkinson’s disease.
• Dr Ninna Granucci (France), co-founder and President of Green Spot Technologies, a company producing food ingredients intended to recycle waste.

To celebrate the European Year of Youth, a further three Rising Innovators under the age of 35 will each receive a €50 000 cash prize:

• Iva Gumnishka (Bulgaria), founder and CEO of Humans in the Loop, a social enterprise connecting conflict-affected communities to digital work opportunities.
• Niamh Donnelly (Ireland), co-founder and CRO of Akara Robotics, a company developing robotic solutions designed for disinfecting hospital rooms.
• Dr Mehak Mumtaz (Portugal), co-founder and COO of iLoF, a company developing a breakthrough AI-platform to accelerate the future of personalized drug discovery and development.

Commissioner Gabriel, who awarded the prizes, said: “We are celebrating 6 women entrepreneurs behind game-changing innovations; 6 successful women entrepreneurs who have brought innovation to market; 6 talented women entrepreneurs who will inspire our youth and the winners of tomorrow.”

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European Capital of Innovation Awards

The winners of the eighth edition of the European Capital of Innovation Awards, have been announced, with Métropole Aix-Marseille Provence becoming the European Capital of Innovation 2022 and winning a cash prize of €1 000 000. The European Rising Innovative City award went to Haarlem in the Netherlands, with a prize of €500 000.

Commissioner Gabriel said: “The iCapital finalist cities are catalysts of flourishing innovation ecosystems across Europe. I am impressed to see that cities are the playground for innovation, testing various approaches, services and products for a better, more sustainable and digital urban future.”

The awards recognise the cities’ long-term efforts to create an environment that enables and embraces innovation. Runners-up for European Capital of Innovation were Espoo (Finland) and Valencia (Spain), while Mainz (Germany) and Aveiro (Portugal) came second and third for European Rising Innovative City.

Background

The European Innovation Council was established under the EU Horizon Europe programme. It has a budget of €10.1 billion to support game-changing innovations throughout the lifecycle from early-stage research to proof of concept, technology transfer, and the financing and scale-up of start-ups and SMEs.

Source: European Commission