Held in Paris last month and awarded by the Science Business Innovation Board, the winners came from the UK, France, Sweden and Italy. The competition drew nominations from around Europe and culminated in an awards ceremony at Paris City Hall.

Professor Molly Stevens from Imperial College London won the Amgen Life Sciences award on the basis of her role in the founding and running of Bioceramic Therapeutics Ltd. Her company has developed a novel scaffold for regrowing bone, cartilage and other tissue. With the prize comes a cheque from Amgen for €5000. The judges praised the transformation of outstanding science into an innovative company with enormous potential for human health.

The Fast Start Award, for companies formed in the past year, went to Nigel Brown and Ted Roberts from Arvia Technology Ltd, UK, who have developed a new process to remove low and trace levels of organic pollutants in water cost-effectively. The judges praised the company’s approach as holding enormous potential to deal with a serious global problem. The company is a spin-out of the University of Manchester, UK.

Other winners include Nikolaos Vlasopoulos, whose company Novacem has a new and promising process for making cement without making carbon dioxide at the same time – currently one tonne of carbon dioxide is released to make one tonne of cement – carried off the Energy/Environment award. The judges noted in particular the opportunity to reduce the production of carbon dioxide, given that the cement industry produces 5% of the world’s industrial output of CO2. Novacem is a spin-out from Imperial College London.