EURACTIV PR

An easy way of publishing your relevant EU press releases.

Winners of 5th annual CTO of the Year Europe Award announced

Date

13 Nov 2019

Sections

Health & Consumers
InfoSociety
Celebrating the most prominent technology leaders of highly successful European companies, the CTO of the Year Europe 2019 Awards have been presented to Amina Hamidi-Calvo, CTO, ABB Electrification, and Joeri Van Steen, CTO, Faktion.
 
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).
 
Recognising Europe’s best innovators
 
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.”
 
 
Ends
 
Notes for Editors:
 
The CTO of the Year Europe is awarded by Orgalim, EIRMA and Spinverse.
For more information about the award, visit https://www.ctoeurope.net.
 
About Orgalim
Orgalim represents Europe’s technology industries: companies that innovate at the crossroads of digital and physical technology. Our industries develop and manufacture the products, systems and services that enable a prosperous and sustainable future. Ranging from large globally active corporations to regionally anchored small and medium-sized enterprises, the companies we represent directly employ 11 million people across Europe and generate an annual turnover of around €2,000 billion. Orgalim is registered under the European Union Transparency Register – ID number: 20210641335-88.
For more information, visit www.orgalim.eu or follow us on Twitter: @Orgalim_EU and LinkedIn: Orgalim Orgalim Press Contact
Eugenia Forcat, Director of Communications Tel: +32 478 403032
 
About Spinverse
Spinverse is a leader in innovation consulting, specialised in driving open innovation ecosystems, arranging funding and commercialising emerging technologies. Since Spinverse was founded in 2004, we have
coordinated over 2.3 B€ of large scale innovation programs and helped our customers get more than 420 M€ of EU funding. Our services include creating and coordinating innovation ecosystems, technology and business consulting.
Spinverse Press Contact
Pekka Koponen, Chairman of Spinverse Tel: +358 40 545 0008
 
About EIRMA
EIRMA is an independent not-for-profit organisation that provides a European perspective on the global management of applied R&D and innovation. It engages 80+ major companies which are based in over 20 countries, operating in a wide range of sectors and gathering world-class R&D performers, since 1966.
EIRMA Press Contact
Ernst Lutz, President of EIRMA info@eirma.org