Kristina Tsvetanova, CEO and co-founder of the Austrian company, BLITAB Technology, which has produced the first tablet for blind users, won the EU prize for Rising Innovators Award фор Women Innovators 2017. This is the fourth edition of the contest and the Rising Innovators Award which Tsvetanova won is a new category introduced this year. It recognises excellence in female entrepreneurs aged 30 years or under. The award is at the amount of EUR 20 000, and is Horizon 2020-funded. To be eligible to compete, participants must have founded or co-founded a company before January 2015 with a turnover of at least EUR 100 000, and either they themselves or their companies must have previously benefitted from public or private funding for research and innovation, whatever the source.
All four winners of the 2017 EU Prize for Women Innovators were announced at a ceremony in the European Parliament in Brussels on March 8, International Women’s Day. The other winners are:
1st Prize (EUR 100 000): Michela Magas, of Croatian/British nationality, founder of Stromatolite, Design Innovation Labs in Sweden and UK, building a new generation of incubation and creative technology toolkits for innovation. [Watch video]
2nd Prize (EUR 50 000): Petra Wadström from Sweden, founder of Solvatten, which produces a portable water purifier and water heater that are powered by solar energy. [Watch video]
3rd Prize (EUR 30 000): Claudia Gärtner from Germany, founder of microfluidic ChipShop, which provides “lab-on-a-chip” systems as miniaturized solutions for better diagnostics. [Watch video]
Women are underrepresented in terms of creating innovative enterprises – only 31% of entrepreneurs in the EU are women. The aim of the EU Prize for Women Innovators is to raise public awareness of the need for more innovation and more women entrepreneurs, to recognise the success of women in innovation and create strong role models.
