Leonardo presents Innovation Awards
The Leonardo 2016 Innovation Awards saw almost 700 projects were submitted by the Group's employees from Leonardo's sites in Italy, the UK and the rest of the world.
The dedicated Young People’s Award online platform recorded around 5,000 contacts.
The winners (three in the students/new graduates category and three PhD students) will be given the opportunity to attend Group internships, in addition to receiving cash prizes.
Leonardo is committed to fully exploiting invaluable wealth of knowledge and expertise. This is how the Leonardo Innovation Awards began, and for more than ten years, the initiative has involved the Group’s employees worldwide, and for the second year in a row being opened up to university students, ready to tackle the technological challenges of the future. The winners were presented with their awards in Rome today, during a ceremony attended by the Minister for Education, Universities and Research, Valeria Fedeli and by the Company’s senior executives.
“Recognise talent in young people and encourage their ambitions: the future growth of the entire Country is dependent on them. This is the main objective of the Ministry that I represent - said Minister Valeria Fedeli – and I am delighted that this is also the objective of commendable initiatives such as the Leonardo Innovation Award in which we take part today. Investment in new generations must be shared increasingly by the whole of society, since we are all responsible for laying the foundations today for the world in which we will live tomorrow.”
"Anticipating today the technologies of tomorrow in a sector featuring rapidly evolving scenarios, is the key to dealing with the competitive strength of large technology investing countries, as well as emerging countries. The technological challenges of the third millennium can only be met through the ability to innovate” – said Mauro Moretti, Chief Executive Officer and General Manager of Leonardo. “The Leonardo 2016 Innovation Awards – Mr Moretti added – has called on young university students once again, as they have the vision and the ability to foresee future developments, either as linear projections of current trends or moving away from them along divergent and unpredictable trajectories. Fostering and emphasising a scientific culture in the school system and strengthening the dialogue between the business world and that of academia – concluded Leonardo’s Chief Executive Officer – are crucial to consolidating the country’s technological leadership."
A PC keyboard able to power itself by reusing the energy generated by tapping the keys; anthropomorphic robots able to perform precision finishing in the last production stage of helicopter rotor; innovative electrodes made in nano-structures that produce a ten-fold increase in lithium battery life for electronic devices such as tablets, mobiles and notebooks, are some of the projects submitted by recent graduates and Phd students from Italian universities who were awarded the Leonardo 2016 Innovation Award, a significant majority of which dealt with issues of power generation and storage.
Employee projects that stand out, include an innovative infra-red system for naval units which guarantee continuous, all-round surveillance around the ship, more efficiently than the systems currently in use, and a patent for integrating and optimising the different telecommunications networks used by the companies providing Air Traffic Control services.
Most of the winning projects share a common feature – a focus on environmental sustainability, one of the crucial issues in developing future technologies, and one that is consistent with the Company’s commitment to harmonising environmental management with business objectives.