For the sixteenth time, the Award Ceremony of the Galileo Masters celebrated novel solutions using Galileo and EGNOS satellite navigation data. During the event, 28 of the popular Galileo Masters trophies were awarded to the best submissions in 2 competition classes, 6 special prizes and 18 regional challenges, as well as to the overall winner.

On 4 December 2019, the GNSS community got together at the historic Paasitorni Congress in Helsinki, Finland. Space business enthusiasts, experts, visionaries, investors and young entrepreneurs all enjoyed the highlight of the EU Space Week: The Awards Ceremony 2019.

The Awards Ceremony, which is organised by AZO, creates a festive setting for the Galileo Masters winners to enjoy their glorious moment live on stage while speakers from the competition’s challenge partners and renowned personalities from the GNSS community hand over the awards.

EU Space Week 2019
The annual Space Week is Europe’s number one space event and aims to bring together entrepreneurs, experts and policy-makers from satellite navigation and Earth observation in Finland, the home country of the EU Council Presidency. From 1 to 5 December 2019, the Paasitorni Congress in Helsinki was the venue for a broad spectrum of plenary sessions, workshops, information sessions and networking opportunities. Especially during accelerator bootcamps, a hackathon event, a startup fair and the awards ceremony for the Galileo Masters and the Copernicus Masters, the next generation of promising space entrepreneurs got the chance to meet important members of the satellite navigation and Earth observation community. This get-together of visionaries, innovators, and young entrepreneurs with experienced and renowned space experts and stakeholders benefitted all of the participants and opened up new opportunities in the space business.

Speakers & Winners
The Awards Ceremony, the glamorous highlight of the European Space Week, was hosted by Claus Kruesken and started with welcoming words from Thorsten Rudolph, CEO of AZO. Throughout the whole event, the stage was open for live pitches by winners and introduction videos presenting their innovative business cases as well as high-ranking speakers and space experts from the Galileo Masters Special Prize and Regional Challenge partners from all across Europe.

The first trophy was handed over by Carlo des Dorides, Executive Director of GSA, expressing the valuable potential of synergising Galileo timing and positioning data with Earth observation. This was something the winning solution in the GSA Galileo.Copernicus Synergy Challenge, Xylene, accomplished. Dr Rolf-Dieter Fischer, Director of Technology Marketing at DLR, congratulated IntegriCom for winning the DLR Artificial Intelligence Navigation Challenge with a shiny trophy. The best submission for the BMVI PRS Challenge was delivered by Odin’s Eye, awarded by Dr Rainer Hollmann from the BMVI.

Besides those Special Prizes with industrial partners, the Galileo Masters also offers the University Challenge for GNSS solutions in the very early stages, which targets students. Paul Bhatia, General Manager of GRACE at the University of Nottingham, invited the winning team from FreeWheel to live-pitch their project to the audience and receive a trophy on stage. Another special challenge in the competition is the GNSS Living Lab Prize, which looks for proposals of new projects that are ready to be tested. Ines Kühnert, Head of Galileo & Copernicus Competitions at AZO, proudly presented Sawcer with this award.

Last but not least, the sixth Special Prize, the 5G IoT Challenge, was introduced by Ulrike Daniels, Business Development & Head of Acceleration Programme at AZO. The award for the best submission aiming at the 5G IoT market was handed to the team from WAIBRObelt.

In addition to these Special Prizes, the 18 Regional Challenges with partners all across Europe are a key part of the Galileo Masters and their winners certainly deserved their moment live on stage as well.
The following Galileo Masters trophies were awarded:

• Andalusia – awarded to Sun & Green
• Austria – awarded to Aeroficial Intelligence
• Baden-Württemberg – awarded to Tocsen
• Basque Country – awarded to AquaRADAR
• Bavaria – awarded to Odin’s Eye, also winning the BMVI Special Prize
• Bremen – awarded to GLASS
• Catalonia – awarded to Myriad
• Czech Republic – awarded to Dronetag
• Estonia – awarded to Polisensio
• France – awarded to DeVine
• Galicia – awarded to CX-GEODRON
• Greece – awarded to PODIS
• Hesse – awarded to RideLink
• Ireland – awarded to Mars Torus
• Italy – awarded to CAPSLoc
• Madrid – awarded to Eolion
• The Netherlands – awarded to feverr
• United Kingdom – awarded to MEDeus

A new feature in 2019 are the two prize classes “Idea of the Year” and “Startup of the Year”, which are additionally awarded to the winning teams of the 6 Special Prizes and 18 Regional Challenges.

This new prize category was introduced by Fiammetta Diani, Head of Market Development at the GSA. The award for the “Idea of the Year” was handed over to the team at CX-GEODRON, led by Yolanda Rodríguez Vaquerio, who already received the award for the Galicia Regional Challenge on stage. Followed by this, Ms Diani invited the Greece Regional Challenge winner Andreas Alamanos and his team from PODIS on stage to be awarded “Startup of the Year”.

The culmination of this glorious night surely was the announcement of the Galileo Masters Overall Winner. Carlo des Dorides invited Markus Stadlmair and his team from Aeroficial Intelligence, who also won the Austrian Regional Challenge, on stage to receive this last trophy.

The awarding of these 23 Galileo Masters winner teams was a ceremonial conclusion to the 2019 version of the competition. Furthermore, the young entrepreneurs demonstrated promising new solutions using Galileo satellite data in a variety of application fields that benefit our society and hold the potential to become future success stories.