The 6th edition of the CEN and CENELEC Standards+Innovation Awards was presented on 10 December 2024 as part of the annual EU flagship event on knowledge valorisation.
The event, titled “Driving EU Prosperity: The Future of Knowledge Valorisation”, is part of the European Commission's awareness raising campaign on knowledge valorisation. It presents the latest policy developments on knowledge valorisation and showcases how research and innovation results can be transformed into societal and economic benefits.
In his opening speech, Karl-Heinz Mayer, the CEN and CENELEC Innovation Champion, acknowledged the growing relevance of the Standards+Innovation awards in a context in which Europe’s competitiveness and ability to translate research developments into innovative products and services is increasingly at the top of the agenda.
The nominations for this year’s Standards+Innovation awards came from the national members of CEN and CENELEC. Specifically, the project category counted 8 nominees, the individual researchers and innovators category counted 9, and the young researchers category saw 8 nominees under 30.
The ceremony was opened by Giovanni Collot, Account Manager for Public Relations at CEN and CENELEC, who – together with Innovation Champion Karl-Heinz Mayer – revealed the winners to the audience.
In the project category, the award went to project INKplant, nominated by UNE. The project deals with ink-based hybrid multi-material fabrication of next-generation implants. It has developed no less than three CEN Workshop Agreements (CWA) and contributed to the international standard ISO/DIS 5092 ‘Additive manufacturing for medical — General principles — Additive manufacturing of non-active implants’.
The consortium of INKplant found that CWAs were a very useful way to translate the project results into market solutions. The three CWAs dealt with standardized scaffolds library for tissue engineering research and industrial applications, workflow from medical images towards optimal personalized implant designs, and methods for the process control of high-resolution mono- and multi-material additive manufacturing respectively.
In the category dedicated to putting the spotlight on individual researchers and innovators who have successfully integrated their work into standardization, the winner was Prof. Dr.med.univ. Kurt Zatloukal of the Medical University of Graz. He was nominated by DIN for his extensive contribution to standardization throughout the years, and in particular for his contribution to developing a standard for digital pathology and AI-based analysis of images for medical diagnosis.
Upon receiving the award, Dr. Zatloukal inspired the audience by declaring “Safety and Performance Requirements are challenging, standards are beautiful,” eliciting knowing smiles from the crowd.
In the last category, the focus is set on students or early-career researchers for the work done in academic theses, doctoral dissertations or other university research projects addressing standardization. Here, the Standards+Innovation Young Researcher Award was given to Maria Hartmann, nominated by ILNAS for her investigations into the readiness of standardization to support the application of machine learning and AI to the aerospace domain.
Maria Hartman holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science and a master’s degree in theoretical computer science from the Free University of Berlin. In addition to her studies, she has made great efforts to highlight the synergy between research and standardization through participation in numerous dissemination events where she has talked on the matter. Accepting the award, she underlined that standardization provides a crucial bridge between research and application in light of the competitive and rapid growing market related to the space ecosystem.
As expressed by CEN and CENELEC Innovation Champion Karl-Heinz Mayer, who handed over the trophies to the winners, all the nominees to the Standards+Innovation awards deserve great recognition for their excellent work. Their contributions show the many benefits that can be reaped when standardization and innovation work together.
The full list of 2024 nominees can be found here.
