EU Prize for Women Innovators crowns winners
Portugal’s Dr Susana Sargento has been announced the winner of the third EU Prize for Women Innovators.
Sargento beat eight competitors in the final round of the contest, which recognises outstanding women entrepreneurs who have successfully brought their innovative ideas to market and hopes to inspire other women to follow in their footsteps.
Sargento was awarded the top spot for her work as co-founder of Veniam, which turns vehicles into Wi-Fi hotspots and builds city scale vehicular networks that collect terabytes of urban data. She received a cash prize of €100,000.
In second place was Professor Sirpa Jalkanen, who was recognised for her role as co-founder of BioTie Therapies in Finland. The company has discovered unique targets for drug development for harmful inflammations and cancer treatment. Jalkanen received €50,000.
Ireland’s Dr Sarah Bourke, co-founder of Skytek, which develops software for the International Space Station and has received innovation awards from NASA, was awarded a €30,000 prize for finishing in third place.
Innovation commissioner Carlos Moedas said: “I want to congratulate the three winners of the 2016 EU Prize for Women Innovators on their outstanding achievements. Europe needs to support more innovators like them: the people who combine scientific excellence with a head for business; the people who turn their research into employment opportunities and their ideas into positive impacts for our society and our economy.”
The finalists were selected by a high-level jury consisting of independent experts from business, venture capital, entrepreneurship and academia. Some 64 people applied to the contest, with innovations across a broad range of sectors, the most dominant being ICT and the Life Sciences.
The three winners received their prizes from Moedas during a Citizens’ Dialogue event in Brussels yesterday on the importance of women in business and research.
