The 2022 EIT Award Ceremony will be held during the EIT Summit on 11 October in Brussels, Belgium – the grand finale to the EIT’s flagship event series: INNOVEIT WEEKS. The winners will represent the most promising innovations emerging from the EIT Community – the largest innovation ecosystem in Europe.

The EIT Awards recognise the immense talent and solutions emerging from the EIT’s ecosystem across Europe: from student to entrepreneur, from lab to market, and from idea to solutions. The nominees have been selected for their unique contributions to taking on global challenges in the fields of climate, energy, digitalisation, food, health, manufacturing, urban mobility and raw materials. The EIT Community’s diversity is well-reflected through the 12 finalists from the following seven countries: Finland, Germany, Italy, Austria, France, Spain, and Denmark.

27 nominees competed in an online semi-final on 29 September. Below are the12 finalists – 3 for each of the 4 awards categories – who will advance to the Award Ceremony:

EIT CHANGE Award:

The finalists competing to be the top graduate of EIT entrepreneurial education programmes are:

• Federico Barbieri, nominated by EIT InnoEnergyfor creating the first federation of energy-focused youth organisations in Europe: the European Youth Energy Network (EYEN)
• Waliyah Sahqani, nominated by EIT Digitalfor creating the zero-waste food start-up: Grape
• Anna Vanderbruggen, nominated by EIT RawMaterialsfor her revolutionary graphite extraction method which could decrease the environmental footprint of battery production

EIT Women Leadership Award:

The finalists for the most outstanding achievements by an exceptional woman leader within the EIT Community are:

• Andrea Barber Lazcano, nominated by EIT Climate-KICfor her leadership at RatedPower, contributing to its award-winning performance in cloud-based solar plant software innovation
• Sabrina Maria Malpede, nominated by EIT InnoEnergyfor bringing her innovative turbine ACR Blade to ACT Blade Ltd, which now makes the lightest, most sustainable, and most controllable wind turbine blades in the market
• Catherine Schreiber, nominated by EIT Digitalfor co-creating the ADVITOSorgan support therapy device from scratch and bringing it successfully to market

EIT Innovators Award:

The finalists among the teams and individuals who developed high-impact products and services are:

• Bernhard Adler, nominated by EIT InnoEnergyfor his ROTATION HEAT PUMPwhich could provide cleaner and low carbon industrial heat
• Morteza Ghorbani Eftekhar, nominated by EIT Climate-KICfor his PurCitysolution for turning buildings into large scale carbon capture air purification systems
• Jean-Louis Pepin, nominated by EIT Healthfor his development of SENSAPNEAto bring simple diagnosis of sleep apnoea to millions with sleep disorders

EIT Venture Award:

The finalists among the start-up and scale-up innovators that benefited from business acceleration and creation support from the EIT Community are:

• Christoph Berger, nominated by EIT InnoEnergyfor his Vilistoself-learning thermostat
• Hans Heyn, nominated by EIT Healthfor his Smart4Diagnosticsmedical pre-analysis application
• Alejandro Trenor, nominated by EIT Foodfor creating Europe’s first certified carbon payment programme for farmers: Soil Capital

Each spot on the podium comes with an award and a monetary prize:

• 1^stPlace: EUR 50 000
• 2^ndPlace: EUR 20 000
• 3^rdPlace: EUR 10 000

The public, too, will have its say with the EIT Public Award. Everyone has a chance to vote for their top innovation from now until 11 October at eitawards.eu

The full list of this year’s nominees and their innovations can be found here

Source: European Institute of Innovation & Technology (https://bit.ly/3UWZjbk)