Highlights of 2013

Putting inventors in the spotlight

Every year the EPO honours outstanding inventors for their contribution to social, economic and technological progress through the European Inventor Award. The 2013 awards were presented in Amsterdam on 28 May to inventors from Austria, France, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain and the US.

The EPO's annual European Inventor Award pays tribute to the creativity of inventors the world over who use their technical, scientific and intellectual skills to make a real contribution to technological progress and economic growth, and in doing so improve people's daily lives. Their inventions ─ new technologies, products and processes ─ are helping to tackle climate change, giving us sustainable transport, powering our cities with clean energy, providing safe and nutritious food, and improving public health.

The 2013 awards were presented at the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam with more than 500 guests in attendance, including Her Royal Highness Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands and Michel Barnier, the European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services.

The awards were presented in five categories, in addition to the Popular Prize:

• Lifetime achievement: Martin Schadt (Switzerland), inventor of the world's first flat-panel liquid crystal display, better known as LCD;
• Industry: Claus Hämmerle and Klaus Brüstle (Austria) from Austrian manufacturer Julius Blum for their invention of a damper system for soft closing of furniture doors, drawers and wall cabinets;
• SMEs: Pål Nyrén (Sweden) for inventing pyrosequencing ─ a far faster, less complicated and cheaper method of sequencing DNA strands;

• Research: Patrick Couvreur, Barbara Stella, Véronique Rosilio, Luigi Cattel (France, Italy), a team at Paris-Sud University, for their invention of nano-capsules which have the potential to destroy cancer cells without harming healthy tissue;
• Non-European countries: Ajay V. Bhatt, Bala Sudarshan Cadambi, Jeff Morriss, Shaun Knoll, Shelagh Callahan (USA) for creating and developing Universal Serial Bus (USB) technology, enabling different devices to communicate with each other;
• The winner of the Popular Prize, who received the most votes online from the public, was José Luis López Gómez (Spain), whose invention of an ‘independent guided' wheel design has helped make high-speed train travel safer and more comfortable.

The 2014 awards will be presented in Berlin on 17 June 2014.