The winners of the 2016 EU Prize for Women Innovators were revealed yesterday, March 10 2016, in an award ceremony held in Brussels. Dr. Susana Sargento was the winner among a shortlist of 9 other women innovators. Veniaum, the company she co-funded, turns vehicles into Wi-Fi hotspots and builds city-scale vehicular networks that collect terabytes of urban data.

The other 2 winners were Prof. Sirpa Jalkanen, co-founder of BioTie Therapies, who has discovered unique targets for drug development for harmful inflammations and cancer treatment and Dr. Sarah Bourke, co-founder of Skytek, who develops software for the International Space Station and received innovation awards from NASA.

During the awards ceremony Commissioner Moedas and Saskia Van Uffelen, CEO Ericsson Belux exchanged with the assistants on quotas, highlighted the role of diversity in innovation and discussed the importance of gender equality among other interesting topics.

On the occasion of the award ceremony show, the European Commission published the latest 'She Figures' statistics. The numbers are encouraging as they show that women are gaining ground in science. However their progress is still slow and uneven. Encouraging the next generation of young people will be key in making those figures rise faster and in achieving gender inclusion in Europe.

The 2016 EU Prize for Women Innovators is the largest prize of its kind worldwide, and follows previous editions in 2011 and 2014. The Prize aims to raise public awareness of the need for more innovation and more female entrepreneurs, and to highlight the achievements of the most successful women innovators.