Since 1999, MIT Technology Review recognizes the young innovators and most talented entrepreneurs from different countries who are developing new technologies to help solve the problems that affect our society nowadays.
These young bright men and women, aged between 24 and 34 years old, have become Innovators Under 35 Europe 2019 after being selected by a judging committee of 116 specialists, from a pool of more than 1,000 candidates.
Among the winners there are different profiles, from researchers to entrepreneurs, including social innovators, designers and makers. All of them have something in common: their effort to develop new projects to change society and business, as well as our ways of working, learning, curing, manufacturing or communicating. The 35 innovators have been recognized in the different categories of the competition: entrepreneurs, humanitarian, pioneers, visionaries and inventors.
The winners offer a broad picture of how technology is evolving, as their projects cover different industries: Biotechnology & Medicine, Nanotechnology & Materials, Software, Artificial Intelligence & Robotics, Computer & Electronics Hardware, Internet & Web, Transportation and Telecommunications. In typical fashion, the category with the most laureates this year has been that of Biotechnology & Medicine; 19 of this year’s winners work in such fields, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics has come in as the second category with 6 winners developing projects related to those topics. More that 75% of this year’s laureates have already founded a start-up in the aim of transferring their value propositions to the market and generate a positive impact on society as a whole.
With more than 60 ambassadors helping identify, scout and recommend promising candidates, this year’s winners feature a plethora of European cultures, based in 12 different countries with 16 different nationalities. The competition country with the highest number of laureates is the United Kingdom (12 are based there and 7 are nationals), followed by Germany with 5 and Spain with 4.
Here is the list of the 35 Innovators Under 35 Europe 2019:
Entrepreneurs
These innovators are creating companies that will revolutionize markets or create new ones.
Hans Genee, 33 – Biosynthia, from Denmark. His “synthetic selections” allows for the production of vitamins in a sustainable, efficient and biological fashion.
Lauri Sippola, 30 – Kaiku Health, from Finland. A platform that monitors cancer patients while finding a way to answer their questions.
Alexandre Colavin, 30 – Jungla , from France. His improved interpretation of genetic tests perfects diagnoses and enhances personalized medicine.
Philip Stevens, 32 – Noscendo, from Germany. To tackle the sepsis medical challenge, he has developed a diagnostic tool that helps identify pathogens in the blood in a matter of hours.
Paul-Adrien Menez, 30 – Zero-Gachis, also from France. He provides insights via artificial intelligence to supermarkets in order to understand their food waste levels and automate food waste management solutions.
Erik Gatenholm, 30 – Ceilink, from Sweden. A company aiming to democratize the access to bioprinters and bioinks could accelerate the development of artificial human organs and tissues for transplants and medical research.
Francesco Petrini, 33 – SenArs from Switzerland. He has developed a device for restoring natural sensory feedback to leg amputees from their missing extremity, increasing functional abilities by using the prosthesis and making it feel part of their body.
Tom Stubbs, 28 – Chronomics, from United Kingdom. Combining epigenetic sequencing and machine learning his company is offering a platform that empowers personalized and proactive health management.
Humanitarians
In trying to solve the problems caused by poverty, war or inequalities, these innovators improve the lives of the people most affected by these circumstances.
Chloe Meineck, 29 – Music Memory Box fromUnited Kingdom. Creatively combining and co-designing interactive technologies with physical interfaces to improve the lives of people living with dementia and their families.
Arnaud Pourredon, 24 – Meditect , from France. A decentralized solution for pharmaceutical companies who export medicines to Africa to prevent patients consuming fake drugs by using blockchain and artificial intelligence.
George Frodsham, 32 – Medisieve , from United Kingdom. A method of treating blood-borne diseases by filtering pathogens, toxins or other targets directly from a patient’s bloodstream.
David Greenberg, 33 – EAVE , from United Kingdom. He has developed a system of smart headphones that protect workers from excessive noise and reduce occupational hazards.
Conor McGinn, 31 – Stevie, from Ireland. His anthropomorphic robot that has a friendly, non-intimidating appearance and can engage in conversations while navigating autonomously could improve the quality of life of older people through care and entertainment.
Inventors
These innovators are creating the devices and technologies that individuals and businesses will use in the future.
Kathrin Brenker, 33 – pxONE from Germany. Her custom-made illumination devices could replace the unreliable flashlights used today in optogenetic research and help accelerate its achievements.
Frederik Kotz, 32 – Glassomer from Germany. Making one of the most important high performance materials of our time, glass, accessible to manufacturing techniques which, until now, could only be used for polymers.
Idoia Ochoa, 34 – University of Illinois from Spain. New digital formats for different omics data that will facilitate their storage, transmission, visualization and joint analysis, while ensuring compatibility with existing tools and infrastructure.
Sorin Popa, 29 – Pathfinder Medical from Romania. He is developing a novel vascular guided catheter system that provides a better way for patients to receive haemodialysis and bypass arterial blockages.
Evelina Vågesjö, 33 – Ilya Pharma from Sweden. She has created “living” drugs based on harmless bacteria to accelerate tissue regeneration and wound healing.
Rebecca Saive, 32 – ETC Solar from Germany. She has developed a new way to mass-fabricate a new type of triangular cross-section silver grids that redirect light to the active area of solar cells instead of reflecting it back to the sun.
Pioneers
These innovators are exploring the limits of science to create new technologies and expand our knowledge.
Tom Kamperman, 31 – IamFluidics BV from Netherlands. His ‘In-air microfluidics’ technology enables scalable production of better functional materials through an accurate and fast microfabrication process.
Anna-Maria Pappa, 31 – University of Cambridge from Greece. She believes that future development of next-generation point of care pathogen diagnostic devices must move from silos to an integrated design approach.
Daniele Pucci, 34 – Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia from Italy. He has envisioned flying humanoid robots and jet-driven platforms that could be used for disaster response, drug delivery, and rescue.
Juan Aparicio Ojea, 33 – Siemens Corporate Technology from Spain. He is working to make industrial robots skilled enough to do human tasks by using a system that helps them manipulate objects they have never seen before.
Yoeri Van de Burgt, 33 – Eindhoven University of Technology from Netherlands. He combines neural network algorithms with microfluidic sensors to help detect cancer metastasis and guide effective and personalized cancer treatments earlier, more efficiently, and noninvasively.
Yarin Gal, 29 – University of Oxford, fromUnited Kingdom. AI still makes mistakes, but his tools can alert us when a system is about to go wrong.
Eirik Eide Pettersen, 29 – Seaborg Technologies, from Norway. His company could provide a carbon-free, cheaper-than-coal source of energy to combat climate change and eliminate energy poverty in a safer more reliable way.
Visionaries
This group includes innovators who are reinventing existing technology or proposing new angles or approaches based on existing technology to solve problems that until now have been unsolvable.
Teresa Arroyo-Gallego, 29 – nQ Medical inc. from Spain. Her technology analyzes how users type into their smartphones by using statistical and machine learning algorithms in order to speed up the diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease.
Tristan Copley-Smith, 33 – OSBeehives, from United Kingdom. He has created a social enterprise that monitors the health of the world’s bees using AI, IoT and collaborative technology to help prevent their extinction.
Ester Caffarel-Salvador, 33 – Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from Spain. She has designed and tested a novel medical device that can revolutionize the lives of 420M diabetic patients worldwide by enabling, for the first time, oral delivery of insulin through a small pill instead of injections.
Katharina Unger, 29 – Livin Farms, from Austria. Based on their patented ways of breeding and separating insects, Livin Farms creates modular and decentralised protein factories that turn organic waste into proteins on-site.
Marek Sirendi, 32 – Transformative, from Estonia. He aims to predict and prevent cardiac arrests among patients with heart problems by using machine learning.
Mark Fingerhuth, 25 – ProteinQure , from Germany. His startup ProteinQure is specializing in using quantum algorithms and artificial intelligence to analyze appropriate proteins in order to create new and more effective drugs.
Meha Nelson, 30 – Predina, from United Kingdom. Her start-up uses AI to dynamically predict the risk of road accidents for any driver, at any given time and place.
Arthur Kay, 29 – Skyroom, from United Kingdom. Skyroom is building high-quality, sustainable, and affordable homes on rooftops of existing buildings for urban key workers in London (such as nurses, teachers and firefighters).
Leslie Nooteboom, 28 – Humanising Autonomy, from the Netherlands. He is developing a global standard of how autonomous vehicles will interact with people, and especially, pedestrians, in order to prevent traffic accidents.