As the European Commission seeks to reinforce the dissemination and exploitation of supported research projects, five impactful projects have been awarded.
The European Commission (EC) has been ramping up activities to disseminate and exploit results from research and innovation projects as an important and integral part of Horizon 2020. Enhanced dissemination and exploitation are strategic matters for the success of Horizon 2020, in particular achieving economic, social and environmental impacts. As part of the various measures to highlight and encourage a focus on broader spill-overs with broader benefits for society from Horizon 2020 and FP7 projects, the Impact Awards were announced at the European Research and Innovation Days event. The occasion served to celebrate five projects illustrating such socio-economic benefits.
Among the winners there were a project developing eco-software enabling many leading airlines to reduce their CO2 footprint, a project with innovative technology helping children with end-stage heart failure, and a project detecting illegal fishing activity gathering information for government authorities and providing a basis for discussion in international fishing agreements.
The prizes acknowledge and reward these projects for demonstrating how they can directly benefit citizens. It is the second edition of the Horizon Impact Award, launched at the same time as the now annual European Research and Innovation Days, both as parts of the increased efforts towards dissemination, exploitation and evaluation of the EU research and innovation programmes. Other recent results from these efforts include the recently published study on the enhanced European Innovation Council pilot, and the announced EU Datathon awards.