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EUROPE

INDEX

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INNOVATORS UNDER 35 - A GLOBAL COMMUNITY

FROM 2011 TO 2016: DISCOVERING LOCAL MASTERMINDS

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INNOVATORS UNDER 35 EUROPE 2017: FROM A LOCAL TO A GLOBAL COMMUNITY / 8


THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY

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THE EUROPEAN LAUREATES: A BIG POOL OF TALENT

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MEET SOME LAUREATES THAT ARE MAKING AN IMPACT

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THE EUROPEAN COLLABORATORS: KEY ACTORS IN THE INNOVATION ECOSYSTEM

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WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT US

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INNOVATORS UNDER 35.


A GLOBAL COMMUNITY
Created in 1999, Innovators Under 35 is the leading community of innovators, pioneers and social
changemakers and the most prestigious recognition worldwide bestowed by MIT Technology Review,
the oldest technology magazine and a world authority on the future of technology, published by The
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The main objective of Innovators Under 35 is to promote the development of innovative technologies
and recognize the young minds that are making exciting strides, shaping their fields and solving
problems in remarkably different ways.
Some winners from previous editions are now recognized worldwide. Most of them have developed
groundbreaking ideas into successful projects and sustainable companies, and are now transforming
the world as we know it.
Among them you will find prominent personalities as Konstantin Novoselov (Nobel Prize in Physics),
Max Levchin (developer of PayPal), David Karp (founder of Tumblr), Sergey Brin (founder of Google)
and Linus Torvalds (developer of Linux)

From 2011 to 2016: Discovering local masterminds


With the aim of identifying talent from every corner of the globe, as well as ensuring the international
nature of this community, MIT Technology Review started organizing local editions of the award in
Europe.
The first country in which the award was organized was Spain, in 2011, followed by France, Germany,
Italy, Belgium and Poland. Since then, six editions have been celebrated in Spain, five in Italy, four in
France, three in Germany and two in Belgium and Poland.
The purpose of the local editions was to showcase the national talent in several european countries
as well as to give them the opportunity to present their projects to a large audience. Among them, two
of the laureates received a special recognition in each country: Innovator of the Year and Social
Innovator.

In addition to the local editions, since 2011 in Spain and 2015 in France, the winners from these countries
had the opportunity to take part in a Learning Expedition: a technology discovery tour of the
Cambridge-Boston area and MITs campus, ending up with an invitation to attend EmTech MIT, one of
the most prestigious emerging technologies conferences worldwide.
Finally, with the aim of gathering the whole community (laureates, influencers, judges and many more
members), MIT Technology Review organized a reunion on 2015 and 2016: the Summit Europe .
It is the global meeting of all the winners from the local editions of MIT Technology Reviews Innovators
Under 35 Awards. It was an optimum environment for reflection, discussion and the exchange of
knowledge and experience regarding innovation and entrepreneurship.
The first edition of this event was celebrated in 2015 at the BNP Paribas Fortis Building and the
European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium. The second edition was held last year in Spain, in the
Barcelona Tech City.

Innovators Under 35 Europe 2017: from a local to a


global community
In 2017, Innovators Under 35 will be streamlined to form a single regional program in Europe with the aim
of pursuing the mission for which it was created in 1999: to lend visibility to the work of the most talented,
young, technological leaders.
The main objective of the European award is to consolidate this young European community of
innovators, pioneers and social changemakers and to discover the most brilliant minds of the region,
regardless of the country of origin.
MIT Technology Review will rely on its committee of judges made up of experts from leading
universities and companies, to select the 35 best profiles of 2017 within the European region: inventors,
entrepreneurs, visionaries, humanitarians or pioneers.
The award ceremony will take place on September 14th in Paris to meet, gather and reward the 35
brightest young minds in Europe selected as Innovators Under 35 Europe 2017 by MIT Technology
Review.

THE COMMUNITY

The European Community

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22 Editions

15% of the innovators

250 young talents

10% fo the winners

30% of the winners are


women

90% of the laureates are


entrepreneurs

40% of the projects

10% of the winners are


researchers

Celebrated in Spain, France,


Belgium, Poland, Germany and Italy

Have joined the European


community of Innovators Under 35

For each edition, al least two of the


laureates are women

Are related to biotechnology and


medicine

Work in hardware-related projects

Have a project related to


nanotechnology and materials

Who have created a startup based


on their project or research

Working on projects which havent


turned into a business yet

The winners of Innovators Under 35 Europe are young people, under the age of 35 that stand out
because of their research and professional accomplishments and personal leadership qualities. They
all have the potential to be highly influential in the future decades and can have a real and great
impact in transforming their areas of expertise.
These areas may be one of the following: biotechnology and medicine, computing and hardware,
energy, Internet and Web, nanotechnology and materials, software, telecommunications and
transportation.

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Meet some laureates that are making an impact

Olga Malinkiewicz

Poland 2015

A materials scientist and entrepreneur, Olga gave up her


postdoctoral studies at the University of Linkping (Sweden) in
September, 2014 to found the company Saule Technologies and
pursue her dreams. To this end, this young woman focused on taking a mineral that could
revolutionize the solar energy industry, perovskite, to the mass market.
In December, 2014, Malinkiewicz presented her inkjet printing manufacturing process for
perovskite sheets in Boston (USA). Since then, her efforts have focused on improving this
process, testing its resistance to aging (and to water exposure), and achieving a larger
printed surface (instead of a mere few square centimeters). Another challenge resides in
the substitution of lead with another component, one which does not entail environmental
concerns and does not encapsulate the material.
Nowadays, Olga is one step closer to commercializing perovskite technology. The team
presented a small, flexible module, which can be easily incorporated into a smartphone at
the International Conference on Perovskite Thin Film Photovoltaics (ABXPV) in Barcelona.
The demonstration device, when exposed to light, provides enough power to charge up the
battery of a mobile phone.
Olgas research and project are a demonstration of how such a cutting-edge and
revolutionary technology developed in a laboratory has managed to bring a real prototype to
market.

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Romain Lacombe

France 2015

Plume Labs, founded in 2014, managed to alert the public to the


air pollution problem thanks to the use of open source air quality
data. Its creator, Romain Lacombe considers that open data plays a
fundamental role in the fight against pollution. In March 2015, his technology helped to raise
awareness about air pollution issues in Paris (which suffered higher levels than Beijing for
24 hours at the peak of its pollution crisis), which led to the establishment of alternate traffic
circulation routes. In 2016, Romain Lacombe received a special invitation from the French
Minister of Economy to represent France at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
In December 2016, Paris-based Plume Labs announced that it had raised $4.5 million to
deepen the impact of an air pollution service it hopes will improve public health, and even
save lives. The round of investment was lead by Laurent Alexandre (an entrepreneur
specialized in biotechnologies and a current investor in high-tech companies) and completed
by innovation aids from BPI France and the European Union. With the latest funding, Plume
says it will expand its atmospheric forecasting platform to 60 countries.
In addition, the project co-founded by Romain Lacombe continues to make progress. On
January 2nd, the Plume Labs team introduced their latest wearable device: Flow. Thanks to
this gadget, it will now be possible to know where and when to find pure air in your city. When
a user wears the device, it automatically sends information regarding the air quality to an
app via Bluetooth. In this way, it allows all the users of the app to know which areas are more
healthy and where to go in order to breathe clean air.

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Nicolas Huchet

France 2015

In 2002, an accident changed the life of young Nicolas Huchet. At


18, this Industrial Mechanic had to learn to live with a myoelectric
prosthetic hand that looked nothing like what he had seen in the
movies. That same year, coincidentally, Huchet discovered the maker culture at LabFab
in Rennes (France), and he immediately wondered whether it would be possible to build
his own prosthesis. As an Innovator Under 35, he presented his Bionic Hand in various
electronics exhibitions, a prosthesis he made for himself with 3D printed parts and open
source hardware.
After receiving the Innovators Under 35 award, he was selected among the 10 finalists of the
Google Impact Challenge, to receive a grant of 200,000 euros: the Bionico project and its
3D printed bionic prosthesis became professional. My Human Kit now has 4 employees and
a growing network of volunteers. Meanwhile, Nicolas spent three months in a FabLab in
Berlin, and Airbus hosted in Toulouse the first Fabrikarium, in which makers and employees of
the aircraft manufacturer have prototyped disability-related tool projects.
Since then, My Human kit has raised a million euros in funding, during three years of
operation, from private partners such as the GMF solidarities, Fondation de France and
Agefiph. It has just opened, in Rennes, the Humanlab, a place where the handicapped can to
make their own prostheses thanks to Huchets technology.

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Sebastien Deletaille

Belgium 2015

A former telecoms consultant at McKinsey & Co, the Belgian


entrepreneur Sebastien Deletaille founded Real Impact Analytics
(RIA) in September 2010 after observing a profitable gap in the
market. RIA helps telecom operators to manage their marketing, sales and distribution
networks more efficiently and successfully by embedding their big data applications in the
day-to-day work of major telecom operators. Their revenue and the size of the team
have more than doubled every year on average since its inception.
Since 2015, the innovative telecom big data startup keeps growing and announced in 2016 a
12 million investment round, led by top class venture capital funds Fortino Capital and Endeit
Capital in collaboration with Gimv through the Gimv Arkiv Tech Fund II. This Series A funding
will allow Real Impact Analytics to further challenge the industry giants with its catalog of
big data applications. Today, 120 people are active users of the software editor, which was
created by Deletaille and his partner.

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Timothe Boitouzet

France 2016

In 2008, Timothe Boitouzet began his architecture studies at


the school of Versailles. At 23, he was admitted to Harvard, which
allowed him to continue his architecture studies while also being
initiated in molecular biology. During his molecular biology training, he
realized that there is an alternative to brick, stone or concrete to be
considered for building the constructions of tomorrow: wood.
This material has historically been associated with more rudimentary and simple structures,
but in Boitouzes view, wood has the potential to innovate and take root within modern
buildings. Boitouzets company, Woodoo, has developed a treatment that gives wood
new properties, amongst which the ability to become translucent stands out. In addition
to overcoming the issues surrounding strength and aesthetics, the treatment patented by
Boitouzet also makes the material fireproof and weatherproof.
Since his nomination as an Innovator Under 35, many national and international media
sources have profiled him as one of the most innovative young minds of the year, which
placed him in the spotlight (TV, radio, international press). Thanks to this international visibility,
he has continued to receive new recognitions:

City of Paris Grand Innovation Prize

Special Mention from the Jury: Charles-Henri Besnard Grand Prize, Mcnat Besnard
de Quelen: (which will allow him to finance the patent process for his material

Winner of the CleanTech Open Challenge which led to his selection to represent France
at the Venture KIC European competition in Frankfurt

National Prize from the Talents BGE competition, organized by BPI France (45,000
for project financing)

First prize in the Total Concours Entreprendre competition

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Luz Rello

Spain 2014

For dyslexic children, learning is not easy. This neurological disability,


which impairs the ability to read and write, is not rare at all: it is
estimated that about about 10% of the population have dyslexia, and
about 5-7% severely so. Although there is no cure, specific training exercises help dyslexic
children to slowly improve their spelling and reading capabilities.
To that end, Luz Rello, a PhD in Linguistics from Pompeu Fabra University (Spain) and a
Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University co-founded an innovative company,
CookieCloud, with the specific aim of producing educational applications for dyslexic
children. Her research was focused on finding out ways to help kids with dyslexia and the
results were translated into the development of several applications:iDEAL eBook Reader
and Dyseggxia (Piruletras).
After being named an Innovator under 35 she continued her research and founded the
social enterprise, Change Dyslexia, to put their approach into practice at scale and to
significantly decrease school failure due to dyslexia. Since the launch of this project, she
has received attention from national and international media and received the honorary
recognition Premio Fundacin Princesa de Girona Social in 2016.
In addition, thanks to the impact of her project and the positive outcome she has obtained in
the international media, she brought her project one step forward by signing an agreement
with the technology giant Samsung. Together, they created Dytective for Samsung: the first
test for tablets and computers that allows its users to detect the risk of dyslexia in just 15
minutes through linguistic games. Dytectives launch has generated a massive and positive
media impact (TV, radio, print and online) so far.

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Marjolaine Grondin

France 2016

Marjolaine is the young co-founder of Jam, an artificial interfacebased program which you can ask any questions you want. It is
able to give you solutions about how to spend your free time with
up-to-date information: the greatest movies to watch in your nearest cinema and the best
restaurants to try out. Also, it can help you find the best recipes, advices on how to get a visa
and many more problems that a young adult (the target users are between 18-30 years
old) may face, and it is available from 7:00 am to 2:00 am. The system started slowly and
managed to increase its number of users from 3,000 to 25,000 in 4 months, exceeding
500,000 exchanges.
After receiving this award in 2016, Jams success has grown exponentially: today, they boast
more than 65.000 users. In December, 2016, they raised one million euros from the Isai
investment fund during their first round of investment financing. In total, the team formed by
Marjolaine has about fifteen people, of which approximately half are artificial intelligence
developers.

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The European collaborators: Key actors in the


innovation ecosystem
+1.000 experts

Are part of our network

+300 alliances
Maximize our reach

Throughout the years, MIT Technology Review has built a large community with over 1.000
professionals and institutions: innovators, entrepreneurs, investors, influencers, professors,
researchers, universities, public institutions, and research centers
These community members collaborate actively with the Innovators Under 35 Europe project to
support innovation and showcase the talent of Europes young minds. Their mission is to cooperate by
spreading the word about the competition, as well as suggesting candidates with disruptive projects
that are suitable to participate in the awards. With their help, Innovators Under 35 contributes to
knowledge creation and the diffusion of new technologies to make the world a better place to
live.
This year was our largest edition yet, bringing together more than 1,000 members of our community
(influencers, innovators, changemakers, collaborators and partners) from different countries, France,
Belgium, Poland, Italy, Germany and Spain.
Some of the institutions that have collaborated with us are:

+80 expert judges

Have evaluated our candidates

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+1.000 candidates

Apply each year to all the European


editions of the Award

Some of the great minds that are lending their time and talent are:

Paloma Cabello
Partner, Finance and Strategy Sr. Advisor and Tech Angel Investor at
CALLIGRAM

Ignasi Barri
Innovation and Digital Transformation Consultant at GFT

Samantha Jerusalmy
Partner at Elaia Ventures

Jean-Franois Carrasco
Board Member of European Institute of Digital Intelligence, Smart
City & Mobility Consultant, Former University of Nice Sophia Antipolis
Technology Transfer Manager

Eva Paunova
Member of the European Parliament, co-chair of the Start-UP working
group within SME Europe

Izabela Disterheft
Director of Gdansk Science & Technology Park

Piotr Garstecki
Doctor at the Institute of Physical Chemistry Polish Academy of
Sciences

Erick Brethenoux
Director, IBM Data & Analytics Strategy

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WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT US


In 2016...
Public Relations

+1.000 journalists from


Europe

Covered the awards ceremonies of


Innovators Under 35 Europe

+150 interviews

From journalists interested in the


profiles of the Innovators Under 35
Europe

+300 publications

In newspapers, magazines, tv and


radio networks have told our story

European media outlets interested in innovation and entrepreneurship published our press releases
and interviewed the Innovators Under 35 award winners. All the events were reported by local media
sources in the countries where the local editions of the Awards were organized: France, Belgium,
Poland, Spain, Italy and Germany.

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Media partners
In addition, each local edition enlists media partners: local and national media sources which
collaborate with the project through their coverage of the Innovators Under 35 competition and awards
ceremony. These media outlets are selected based on their importance and contacted proactively to
lend visibility to the winning projects throughout the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem.
In 2016, more than 20 media partners showcased the projects of the European Innovators Under 35:

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Social Media

+1M reach through our


posts on Twitter

+400 likes on Facebook

Videos, photos, publications, etc.

Before and during the awards


Ceremonies

+1.100 twets

+4.000 video views

Through the official hashtag


#Innovators35EU

Youtube + Facebook

All the news regarding the Innovators Under 35 competition and the community are published on our
Social Media. These are some of the most influencial accounts talking about us:

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EUROPE

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