European Inventor Award 2024: seven winners from Europe and the world

Six Europeans and one Japanese were honoured in different categories at the European Inventor Award 2024, held in Malta on 09/07/2024 and organised by the European Patent Office (EPO).

The winners of the six categories are as follows:
• Industry: Fiorenzo Dioni and Richard Oberle, Italian and German engineers (IDRA Group, manufacturer of die-casting machinery, Italy), for their work on high-precision aluminium casting for the automotive industry.
• Non-EPO Countries: Masato Sagawa, a Japanese materials scientist (NDFEB Corporation, Intermetallics Japan Corporation) for his work on Neodymium-iron-boron (Nd-Fe-B) magnets.
• Research: Cordelia Schmid, a German computer scientist (Inria, National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology, France), for her work enabling AI to "see" and interpret complex visual data in real time.
• SMEs: Olga Malinkiewicz, a Polish inventor (Saule Technologies, high-tech company, Poland), and her team for their work on printable perovskite solar cells.
• Lifetime Achievement: Carol Vivien Robinson, a British scientist (Oxford University…