08 / 10 / 2019


EARTO Policy Event and Innovation Awards Ceremony 2019 – 8 October 2019

EARTO organised its Policy Event and Innovation Awards on 8 October 2019 from 09.30-14.00 at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels. The Policy Event gathered more around 250 representatives from RTOs, EU institutions, industry as well as other key R&I stakeholders. The programme featured two keynote speeches by Jean-Eric Paquet, Director-General of DG R&I, and Khalil Rouhana, Deputy Director-General of DG CONNECT. Following was a panel discussion with EARTO Members’ representatives on key topics.   The 11th edition of the EARTO Innovation Awards Ceremony was held right after the Policy Event. Six RTOs’ innovations were rewarded by Matthias Petschke, Director EU Satellite and Navigation Systems, DG GROW and Antti Vasara, EARTO President and CEO of VTT, on two categories: Impact Delivered and Impact Expected. Fraunhofer received the award in the Impact Delivered category for the development of the Multi-Criteria Optimisation (MCO) software tool to support the radiotherapy treatment for cancer, which contributes to improved long-term survival rates, fewer side effects and better quality of life for patients. CEA received the award in the Impact Expected category for the development of the Smart Energy Hub, a hybrid energy storage and co-generation system, enabling buildings to use their own clean and local energy supply (see EARTO Innovation Awards press release). On the same day, EARTO published the 2019 edition of its Innovation Awards brochure, a collection of twenty-five innovations featuring EARTO members, which gives a flavour of the wide range of RTOs’ work. The brochure includes articles on all RTOs that took part in this year’s competition with a special focus on the 6 finalists which are, in addition to the two winners Fraunhofer & CEA: TNO, RISE, Fedit – CIT UPC, Tecnalia (see last years’ editions).   More information on the presentations and photos are available here. You can have a look back at the previous editions of the Policy Event here and the Innovation Awards Ceremony here.