100+ leading figures from European industry assembled yesterday on 12 November at Orgalim’s ‘Reinventing Europe’s Industrial Leadership’ conference in Brussels for the announcement of the winners of the 2019 CTO of the Year Europe Award. This prestigious international accolade is presented in recognition of the pioneering leaders driving European growth and prosperity through technology and innovation. It is awarded by Orgalim, EIRMA and Spinverse. An international jury of experts selected six finalists from nominations submitted from all over Europe, before ultimately choosing winners in two categories: Large Enterprises and Small and Medium- Sized Enterprises (SMEs).

 

 

The winner in the category of Large Enterprises is Ms. Amina Hamidi-Calvo, CTO of ABB Electrification. Amina and ABB Electrification, part of the Swiss-Swedish multinational corporation ABB, are making their contribution to the economic competitiveness of Europe with safe, smart and sustainable electrification for utilities, industries, transport and infrastructure. “This is great recognition of ABB’s work in meeting the demands brought about by urbanisation, digitisation and a growing dependence on electrification,” commented Ms Hamidi-Calvo. “Technology really holds the key to improving how we can all live, work, and play more responsibly for the environment, underpinning thriving economies. I am delighted to accept this award and dedicate it to all the unsung heroes tirelessly making a positive difference each day through innovation and technology.”

 

The winner in the Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises category is CTO of Faktion, Mr. Joeri Van Steen. Faktion is one of the fastest growing artificial intelligence (AI) scale-ups in Europe, which specializes in building AI, machine learning and deep learning solutions for some of the most innovative companies in the world. Joeri and the whole Faktion team are consistently beating larger players on natural language processing tasks like intent recognition and entity extraction. “This is a wonderful reward for the hard work not only of myself but of my team,” commented Mr Van Steen. “CTOs play a central role in driving innovation strategy and processes at a company and aligning this with business needs. These innovationscan also make a difference to society, as in Faktion’s work with non-profit organisations on AI solutions to help address needs in areas like healthcare.”

 

“CTO of the Year Europe recognises those individuals who have advanced European competitiveness through innovation,” comments Tomas Hedenborg, Chairman of the Jury and President of Orgalim. “We are proud of all of our finalists and award winners for what they have accomplished. These pioneers embody European technology leadership at its finest, and are fantastic role models for the great talent at work across EU industry today.”