Europe’s Academic Innovators Recognised in ACES Awards

Academic entrepreneurs from France, Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom were recognised in the second annual ACES awards, held in Paris on 10 December and awarded by the Science Business Innovation Board. The winners come from the UK, France, Sweden and Italy.

Winners include entrepreneurs who devised a new system for regrowing bone and cartilage, ultra-light metal components for airplanes, a new cement-making process, new robotics software and a water-purification system. The vice rector of Italy’s topranked university, the Politecnico di Milano, was also honored for encouraging spin-outs and industrial relations on campus.

The ACES is a pan-European competition among companies spun out from universities – to recognise the best academic entrepreneurs from across all technology disciplines. This year, the ACES drew nominations from around Europe and culminated in an awards ceremony at Paris City Hall.

The winners, selected by a distinguished jury of European business and academic leaders, include: Professor Molly Stevens from Imperial College London won the Amgen Life Sciences award on the basis of her role in the founding and running of Bioceramic Therapeutics Ltd. Her company has developed a novel scaffold for regrowing bone, cartilage and other tissue. With the prize comes a cheque from Amgen for €5000. The judges praised the transformation of outstanding science into an innovative company with enormous potential for human health.

Nikolaos Vlasopoulos, whose company Novacem has a new and promising process for making cement without making carbon dioxide at the same time – currently one tonne of carbon dioxide is released to make one tonne of cement – carried off the Energy/Environment award. The judges noted in particular the opportunity to reduce the production of carbon dioxide, given that the cement industry produces 5 per cent of the world’s industrial output of CO2. Novacem is a spin-off from Imperial College London, UK.

The Microsoft ICT Award went to French entrepreneur Jean-Christoph Baillie. The company he formed, Gostai, has created a platform that allows proprietary robots to use the same kinds of software. There are many robots with embedded software, said the judges, but Gostai’s approach could present a layer of independence and offer a web service to provide a number of activities for robots. Gostai is a spin-off company from
ENSTA/ParisTech, France. As part of the prize, Jean-Christoph wins an all-expenses-paid visit to the headquarters of Microsoft in Redmond, Washington.

In the Materials/Chemistry section, the prize went to Mattias Grufberg and Anders Axelsson from Sweden. The judges were highly impressed with the way in which the technology they developed had led to the creation of a company, Lamera, which makes metal components with a third the weight of traditional components but the same strength – simply by creating a metal laminate. The original idea came from Volvo and the spin-off company was developed at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden.

The Fast Start Award, for companies formed in the past year, went to Nigel Brown and Ted Roberts from Arvia Technology Ltd, UK, who have developed a new process to remove low and trace levels of organic pollutants in water cost-effectively. The judges praised the company’s approach as holding enormous potential to deal with a serious global problem. The company is a spin-out of the University of Manchester, UK.

The judges’ final award, the Bridge Award for individuals who have done the most to promote technology transfer and a culture of innovation in Europe, went to Riccardo Pietrabissa from the Politecnico di Milano, Italy. The judges cited in particular his role in setting up the Italian tech transfer network Netval, which has grown into an association of 45 universities providing one voice for university technology transfer in Italy.

The ACES Awards are sponsored by Amgen and Microsoft, with support from Procter & Gamble, Imperial Innovations Group PLC, ParisTech, the Paris Mayor’s Office, the American Chamber of Commerce in France, and the Economist magazine.