Horizon 2020: EU Prize for Women Innovators - SWFS-Prize-2020

The prizes will boost public awareness of the potential, importance and contribution of women to the innovation ecosystem and create strong role models inspiring other women to become innovators themselves.

Women are underrepresented in terms of creating innovative enterprises. This is an untapped potential for Europe, which needs to optimise all available resources to remain competitive and find solutions to our societal challenges. This award scheme recognises the role of women in bringing about game-changing innovations to market honouring the outstanding achievements of women running innovative companies.

The "EU Prize for Women Innovators" will be awarded to up to four women innovators in total (including one young woman innovator, so-called 'rising innovator') who have created the largest impact on the innovation ecosystem by transforming ideas into new and advanced products and/or services for the benefit and wealth of the European citizens.

Participants for the "EU Prize for Women Innovators 2020" must comply with the following eligibility criteria to participate:

• 1. The participant must be a woman. For the Rising Innovator Award, the contestant must be a woman on or after 1 January 1985.
• 2. The participant must be an ordinary resident in an EU Member State or a country associated to Horizon 2020.
• 3. The participant must be the founder or co-founder of an existing and active innovative company registered before 1 January 2018.

Budget: 350.000 EUR.

Three prizes of EUR 100,000 each for the Women Innovators category and EUR 50,000 for the Rising Innovator category.

Opening of the submission: 11 February 2020.

Closing date for submission: 21 April 2020, 17:00 CET.

If there are more than 200 applications, there will be a pre-selection phase to select the best 100 applications to pass to jury review. Otherwise, all eligible applications will pass directly to jury review.

The pre-selection panel and jury usually have a different composition, but jury members may participate in the pre-selection panel. The jury evaluation is planned to take place between April 2020 and June 2020.