IX València Innovation Capital

The Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), and especially IDEAS, its entrepreneurship area, were the big winners at the ninth edition of the València Innovation Capital awards, the annual awards presented by the platform of the Department of Innovation of Valencia City Council, created to promote a dynamic, diverse and creative city.

Of the 25 awards presented, with a total prize fund of 96,000 euros, 9 are linked to the UPV, and 7 have gone to IDEAS entrepreneurs.

7 first prizes and 2 special mentions

Specifically, the IDEAS entrepreneurs awarded first prizes, each worth 6,000 euros, are Grupo ImpactE Planificación Urbana SL, for their project 'Tools for renewable deployment and management', in the Sustainability category; EBHEALTH3, for 'Wellness Watcher', in Health and Wellbeing; Martha Patricia Medina Casas, Gentil Andrés Collazos Escobar and Germano Carvalho Rosa, for 'Advanced and intelligent technology for the treatment of emerging pollutants in wastewater', in Disruptive and Advanced Technologies; Cosmin Ionescu, for 'Detection of forest fires from the air by means of artificial vision technology and automatic learning' (Bachelor's Thesis) and María Dolores Boluda Prieto, for 'Design and implementation of an operational research tool for the planning and sequencing of ship loading/unloading' (Master's Thesis).

Alongside them, two other projects linked to the UPV, 'Educational and sustainable home automation through a dialogical approach aimed at students at risk of social exclusion', from the Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles Parish in Valencia (in the 'Schools' category); and 'Deep learning and image biomarkers in the study of metabolic and liver diseases based on magnetic resonance and computerised tomography', by Ana María Jiménez Pastor (Thesis), have also received first prizes.

To these should be added the mentions obtained by Energy Blind SL and Leonardo Rodríguez Martínez, in both cases related to IDEAS, each with a prize of 2,000 euros.

More than €470,000 in grants for 6 UPV projects

In addition to the prizes, a total of 12 grants were also awarded during the gala, half of which went to UPV projects, with a total amount for the latter of €472,154.95.

Of the subsidised projects, 3 belong to the IDEAS ecosystem: 'Development of an artificial intelligence-based tool for medical imaging (MRI) to aid in the diagnosis and non-invasive tumour characterisation of breast cancer patients for a personalised therapeutic approach' (Quibim SL), 'Marine drone for cleaning up waste at sea' (Proteus Innovation SL), and 'Wellness Watcher Colon Cancer' (EBHEALTH3 SL).

Together with these, the other three UPV projects that have been granted aid are: 'Ecotourism and biodiversity in the city of Valencia through acoustic monitoring and artificial intelligence', 'Scooter control to reduce accidents and improve traffic', and 'Inplan. Data-based urban planning' (Arqueha, Arquitectura y Urbanismo, SLP).