Search

The European Institute of Innovation and Technology – the EIT, set up by the European Union to encourage innovation – is to launch an awards programme for young entrepreneurs next year, in partnership with Science|Business. The move is part of a push to change attitudes to entrepreneurship in Europe, and was announced today (3 February) by EIT Board member Daria Tataj at the ACES Academic Enterprise conference, held at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

There’s still little progress to report in Europe’s innovation performance, as the gap with Japan and the US widens further, and upcoming competitors China and Brazil are catching up, according to the EU’s latest reckoning in the 2010 Innovation Union Scoreboard.

Unusually, innovation is on the agenda at the meeting Feb. 4 of European leaders in Brussels. On the eve of this summit, a group of innovation leaders calls for a sweeping overhaul of the system.

Former Academic Enterprise Award (ACES) winner Novacem, a spin-out specialised in carbon negative cement, has secured a follow-on investment from the London Technology Fund.

It’s a year since Maire Geoghegan-Quinn stepped into her post, promising to be a woman of action. This week came the first concrete fruits of that pledge, with a pruning of R&D grant rules. But how much progress is the Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science judged to have made elsewhere?

The European Commission has opened an official consultation procedure, in preparation of possible changes to public procurement rules.

Being first on the moon looks trifling next to all the things science is expected to do for us now