On December 1st, the winners of the XXI edition of the National Award for Innovation (PNI), the most important and widespread business plan competition in Italy, promoted by the Italian Association of Universities, Academic Incubators and Regional Start Cups – PNICube, and organized this year in collaboration with the Lombardy Region and the Milan-Bicocca University, Milan Polytechnic, Bocconi University and Milan State University, were announced. coordinated by the public-private ecosystem “MUSA” (Multilayered Urban Sustainability Action), with the support of PoliHub and the main partnership of the Iren Group, Nobento-iVision, Gilead and AlmavivA. The PNI is the competition for the best innovative business projects selected from the 16 regional competitions (StartCup) involving 55 universities, incubators and research institutions in 17 regions of Italy. The winners were chosen from among the 71 finalist startups by a Jury composed of representatives of the business, research and venture capital worlds on the basis of criteria such as the value of technological content or knowledge, technical feasibility and development potential, adequacy of the team’s skills, attractiveness for the market. Here are the winning projects by sector, each of them will receive 25 thousand euros. ICT (Information Technology and New Media) Award and OVERALL WINNER PNI: Focoos Ai (Start Cup Piedmont-Valle D’Aosta) – provides advanced software that automates the process of creating and training computer vision networks optimized for any device. Using AI for computer vision applications on energy-efficient devices such as satellites or drones presents significant challenges for aerospace companies. Traditional AI models are often oversized, which means they require significant computational resources and energy. Focoos AI provides state-of-the-art software that, following customers’ requirements related to the end application, hardware specifications, and data, automatically designs and trains tailor-made optimized neural networks without depending on expensive hardware, eliminating time-consuming manual tasks, and minimizing human error. “The technology significantly reduces energy consumption,” added CEO Antonio Tavera, “improves operational efficiency and enables real-time data processing on the devices themselves.” INDUSTRIAL Award (Innovative Industrial Production) Foreverland (Start Cup Puglia) – Italian foodtech startup rethinking the food we love for a delicious future. Freecao is the new chocolate: delicious, sustainable and cocoa-free. For the past 12 months, he has been working to make Freecao, a product that could be the successor to chocolate. Foreverland uses local ingredients and existing technologies with a touch of innovation to create innovative chocolate for people and the planet. In fact, cocoa has enormous sustainability problems and due to climate change it could disappear. “Foreverland’s mission,” says Massimo Sabatini, CEO & co-founder is to drastically reduce CO2 emissions and water consumption in the food industry by enhancing carob, of which Italy is the second largest producer in the world.” IREN CLEANTECH & ENERGY Award (improvement of environmental sustainability): Preinvel (Start Cup Puglia) – has patented the industrial fluid dynamic filter that reduces the most dangerous polluting emissions with zero maintenance costs, using the filtering effects of air flows. The technology is based on Bernoulli’s principle to generate areas of high depression and capture fine dust of less than 0.5 microns produced by civil and industrial activities. The result is a technology with maintenance costs close to zero, as it does not require mechanical or electrical capture systems. The PREINVEL fluid dynamic filter is patented in China, Japan, Russia, Canada, Italy and Europe and is currently being watched by major industrial companies for applications ranging from steel to shipbuilding, up to military applications to reclaim war zones bombed by chemical weapons. “PREINVEL’s mission is to promote eco-sustainable industrial development – underlined the CEO Raffaele Nacchiero – that guarantees healthy economic growth, but above all that reconciles the right to work with the right to health”. LIFE SCIENCES-MEDtech Award (improvement of people’s health): Livgemini (Start Cup Lazio) – Advanced tool for the prevention, diagnosis and monitoring of aortic aneurysm based on Medical Digital Twin. Startup born from the European project Horizon 2020-Research and Innovation- “MeDiTATe” which aims to develop Digital Twins of vascular anatomies for the study of aneurysm. “The partnership between universities, hospitals and companies ,” commented Lorenzo Geronzi, Co-founder & CEO, ” is the basis of the LivGemini business idea that integrates advanced medical skills with innovative simulation methods based on the Medical Digital Twin.” The current criterion for access to surgery in the case of aortic aneurysm involves the evaluation of the diameter alone and is often inaccurate, causing high mortality rates among non-operated patients. The LivGemini team developed and tested a prototype based on advanced 3D modeling and real-time hemodynamic analysis, enriched with AI predictions, to support the physician in the accurate diagnosis and prognosis of aortic aneurysm, with the ambitious societal goal of decreasing mortality associated with this disease.
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