Waterlab in South Africa has developed a cost-effective and non-invasive method of tracking and predicting the spread of COVID-19, hepatitis E, norovirus and other infectious diseases through the microbiological analysis of wastewater.
By her own admission, Dr. Gina Pocock, Specialist Consultant at Waterlab, never had any great burning ambition to pioneer a potentially life-saving diagnostic methodology, but she possesses an obvious energy and optimism that drove the South African company’s success.
Posted 20 Feb 24
Honey bees and other pollinators are vital for the planet’s ecosystems and crops, but they are dying out at alarming rates due to climate change, intensive farming and pesticides. A startup in Andalusia, Spain, has a solution: producing hoverflies on an industrial scale. Following an R&D project with Dutch partners, Polyfly is breeding new ways to pollinate more fruit crops.
Posted 31 Jan 24
By Georgia Tindale
Dutch company, Concreet Projectmanagement B.V., joined forces with Ugandan company, Eco Concrete Ltd., to tackle the ever-growing issue of developing sustainable and affordable building infrastructure. Their solution? Creating new recipes for one of the world’s most common building materials: concrete. With the right backing, their geopolymer technology has the potential to go global
Posted 15 Jan 24
By Georgia Tindale
As we have seen in yet another summer of horrendous wildfires across the globe, which crept their way across North Africa, Greece, Tenerife and Canada, when a wildfire strikes, there is no time to waste.
Latvian company, Baltic Satellite Service, has teamed up with partners AD TELECOM (in Spain) and AXSYSNAV (in France), on an innovative early warning technology for wildfire detection: the first of its kind to track fires in real time and guide fire brigades to the incident.
Already attracting interest from clients in Europe and beyond, this early wildfire detection system looks set to become ever more necessary, due to the increase in extreme weather events prompted by climate change.
Posted 15 Dec 23
The determination of one entrepreneurial Danish research chemist and his team at Pentabase have developed a revolutionary new polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test that produces results in hours not days. Ulf Bech Christensen expanded his company tenfold overnight, reopened Frankfurt airport during the pandemic and improved the effectiveness of cancer screening, diagnostics and monitoring to deliver more personalised and more effective treatment and care.
Posted 12 Dec 23
Freshwater ecosystems and their biodiversity face growing threats. But thanks to cutting-edge R&D, we are witnessing remarkable progress in how we can conserve the life in our lakes and rivers. Scientists at Laboratorios Tecnológicos de Levante in Spain are now cleverly using DNA analysis to assess the health and ecological state of fresh bodies of water.
Posted 26 Oct 23
By Georgia Tindale
Family-run French company, SOFRAPAR, has introduced new carbon uptake booster technology that is helping to combat desertification and deforestation. In Senegal, this is reinforcing a rapidly-declining natural forest area and helping local populations regain some food security.
Posted 11 Sep 23
The United Kingdom and European Commission reached political agreement on 7 September 2023 on the United Kingdom’s association to Horizon Europe. This means that all calls in Work Programme 2024 will be covered by association.
Posted 11 Sep 23
More efficient use of energy can save companies money and make an important contribution to reducing global warming. To achieve these savings, the ITEA Cluster project SPEAR involving 22 international partners and led by southwest German software developer, Let’s Dev, has created and tested an algorithm to assess the sum of a company’s energy usage by looking at all individual devices. It can also suggest sustainable energy savings and ways to use more renewable sources like solar and wind energy.
Posted 4 May 23
Vertical gardens on a mass scale could help bring temperatures down in cities and boost biodiversity. Until now, “living walls” were novelty features on landmark buildings, but an innovative Austro-German living wall could pave the way to delivering greener urbanisation worldwide.
Posted 15 Mar 23
Vertical gardens on a mass scale could help bring temperatures down in cities and boost biodiversity. Until now, “living walls” were novelty features on landmark buildings, but an innovative Austro-German living wall could pave the way to delivering greener urbanisation worldwide.
Posted 15 Mar 23
People disfigured in accidents, war or from cancer have to wait months for an artificial nose or ear. So, a team of robotics developers at Portuguese company, Roboptics, has stepped in to find a faster way to rebuild damaged faces with 3D printed prostheses.
Posted 7 Dec 22
Low earth orbit (LEO) satellites hit the news when Elon Musk offered them to Ukraine to allow residents to keep communicating with the outside world when existing telecommunications networks were knocked out. But that’s only a small illustration of what LEO satellites can do for humanity if a Korean-led research team has its way, reports Sarah Morris.
Posted 9 Nov 22
It is almost a flip of a coin whether pancreatic cancer patients respond to the standard chemotherapy drug, FOLFIRINOX. As a solution to oncologists apprehensively giving patients one of the toughest chemotherapy treatments out there, Dutch bioinformatics company, Omnigen, is developing a clinical decision support system based on a DNA test that shows a patient’s responsiveness to FOLFIRINOX treatment with an initial accuracy rate of 93%.
Posted 27 Oct 22
At this year’s Global Innovation Summit in Estoril, Portugal, on 22-23 June, we presented five Eureka innovation awards to organisations for the ground-breaking products, processes or services developed during a Eureka project.
National funding bodies nominated two organisations for each of our five award categories:
Posted 8 Jul 22
Wednesday 22 June 2022 – Ministers and their representatives, hosted by Portuguese Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education Elvira Fortunato, gathered in Estoril for the Eureka XXVIII Ministerial Conference.
Together, they stressed the importance of Eureka in the global research, development and innovation landscape and recognised its unique role in supporting the development of ground-breaking innovations that are boosting world economies, creating jobs and have real positive societal impact.
Ministers and their representatives reaffirmed their commitment and national support to continue and further the development of Eureka.
Of particular note, Canada and South Korea became full members of Eureka. Chile was reassociated to the network.
The European Partnership on Innovative SMEs, the biggest SME-focused action in the European innovation ecosystems under the EU’s Horizon Europe, was launched by Minister Fortunato and Commission Research and Innovation Director-General Paquet.
Read the full Ministerial Conference communiqué here.
Posted 20 Jun 22
