New EU Prize for Women Innovators

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The European Commission has announced a new prize to give public recognition to the very best women innovators who have brought their outstanding achievements to market. The aim of this new prize is to raise public awareness of the needs for more innovation and especially more women entrepreneurs in research and industry. The three winners will be selected by an independent panel of judges from business and academia. The first prize winner will receive € 100 000, with €50 000 and €25 000 going to the second and third prize winners. The deadline for application is 20 September 2011.

Although women are more and more active in research, there are still too few women creating innovative enterprises. This represents an untapped potential for Europe which needs all its human resources to remain competitive and find solutions to the great challenges that we are facing (such as climate change, energy and resource efficiency, health etc).

With the new EU Prize for Women Innovators, three women who have at some point of their careers benefited from the EU's Framework Programmes for Research or the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP), will be rewarded for their accomplishments. The aim is to inspire other women to follow in their footsteps.
The award ceremony will take place on 5 December 2011 at the Innovation Convention organised by the European Commission in Brussels (http://ec.europa.eu/ic2011)

More information and participation forms at http://ec.europa.eu/women-innovators

Contact:
Charlotte Gugenheim
Press officer, European Commission, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation
[e-mail]