All news and blog articles

By Georgia Tindale

Family-run French company, SOFRAPAR, has introduced new carbon uptake booster technology that is helping to combat desertification and deforestation. In Senegal, this is reinforcing a rapidly-declining natural forest area and helping local populations regain some food security.

The United Kingdom and European Commission reached political agreement on 7 September 2023 on the United Kingdom’s association to Horizon Europe. This means that all calls in Work Programme 2024 will be covered by association.

More efficient use of energy can save companies money and make an important contribution to reducing global warming. To achieve these savings, the ITEA Cluster project SPEAR involving 22 international partners and led by southwest German software developer, Let’s Dev, has created and tested an algorithm to assess the sum of a company’s energy usage by looking at all individual devices. It can also suggest sustainable energy savings and ways to use more renewable sources like solar and wind energy.

Vertical gardens on a mass scale could help bring temperatures down in cities and boost biodiversity. Until now, “living walls” were novelty features on landmark buildings, but an innovative Austro-German living wall could pave the way to delivering greener urbanisation worldwide.

People disfigured in accidents, war or from cancer have to wait months for an artificial nose or ear. So, a team of robotics developers at Portuguese company, Roboptics, has stepped in to find a faster way to rebuild damaged faces with 3D printed prostheses.

Low earth orbit (LEO) satellites hit the news when Elon Musk offered them to Ukraine to allow residents to keep communicating with the outside world when existing telecommunications networks were knocked out. But that’s only a small illustration of what LEO satellites can do for humanity if a Korean-led research team has its way, reports Sarah Morris.

It is almost a flip of a coin whether pancreatic cancer patients respond to the standard chemotherapy drug, FOLFIRINOX. As a solution to oncologists apprehensively giving patients one of the toughest chemotherapy treatments out there, Dutch bioinformatics company, Omnigen, is developing a clinical decision support system based on a DNA test that shows a patient’s responsiveness to FOLFIRINOX treatment with an initial accuracy rate of 93%.

At this year’s Global Innovation Summit in Estoril, Portugal, on 22-23 June, we presented five Eureka innovation awards to organisations for the ground-breaking products, processes or services developed during a Eureka project.

National funding bodies nominated two organisations for each of our five award categories:

• Best Product and Service Innovation
• Best Sustainability Innovation
• Best Thematic Innovation (space-ocean-earth systems)
• Best Woman in Leadership
• Best Portuguese Project

Wednesday 22 June 2022 – Ministers and their representatives, hosted by Portuguese Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education Elvira Fortunato, gathered in Estoril for the Eureka XXVIII Ministerial Conference.

Together, they stressed the importance of Eureka in the global research, development and innovation landscape and recognised its unique role in supporting the development of ground-breaking innovations that are boosting world economies, creating jobs and have real positive societal impact.

Ministers and their representatives reaffirmed their commitment and national support to continue and further the development of Eureka.

Of particular note, Canada and South Korea became full members of Eureka. Chile was reassociated to the network.

The European Partnership on Innovative SMEs, the biggest SME-focused action in the European innovation ecosystems under the EU’s Horizon Europe, was launched by Minister Fortunato and Commission Research and Innovation Director-General Paquet.

Read the full Ministerial Conference communiqué here.

It is commonly known that a broken spine (= paraplegia) will cause loss of some if not all motor functions, due to damage of the bone marrow. In many cases it will paralyse a patient. In the US and EU alone over 480.000 people are bound to wheelchairs, due to their spinal injuries and each year, around 24.000 more people join this list.

In 2021, we launched a series of online sessions held by major corporates as part of our investment readiness programme. Agbar, a multinational water technologies company participated, setting challenges for startups and SMEs. Carlos Montero, Chief Technology Officer at Agbar, told us how the sessions helped Agbar find Dutch infrastructure pioneer, Cittamap.

In 2021, we launched a series of online sessions held by major corporates as part of our investment readiness programme. Enel, a multinational energy company participated, setting challenges for energy sector startups and SMEs. Fernando Sandoval, Manager of Enel’s European Innovation Hub (Hub Europe) since 2017, spoke to us about how the sessions resulted in conversations leading towards a potential partnership with Swiss engineering company, DAES.

A horticulturalist and computer scientist may seem like an unlikely duo, but Green City Solutions’ cofounders, Peter Sänger and Liang Wu, have been driven by a shared goal to create a biotech air filter that reduces air pollution. We learned about their growth together from studying at university to successfully marketing their CityTree and CityBreeze products, which combine dust and carbon dioxide-absorbing moss with internet of things (IoT) technology, creating fresh air zones in many European cities.

Even small quantities of moss can absorb large amounts of harmful dust particles and greenhouse gases, so German Bestensee-based company Green City Solutions are harnessing the power of moss in their internet of things (IoT) CityTree and CityBreeze biotech products to target the most polluted parts of urban areas.

Consumers want all year-round healthy and sustainable fruit and vegetables wherever they live. The pressures are enormous on hard-grafting farmers but Spanish agro technology company Hispatec is showing how agriculture 4.0 can support them to boost productivity and keep environmentally conscious customers happy even thousands of miles away.

This summer has been all about football. Spectators have just about recovered from the nail-biting European Championship final after Italy took the top spot from the England squad on home turf (to the dismay of 60,000 fans baying in the wings).

Now, with football on the brain, we meet Nikolaj Thomassen, founder of the Danish company, Next11 Technologies, which has developed a novel smart football tracking system for individual and team training. It is ready to be launched to the mass market this month.