Nominees and winners 2012

The 2012 European Inventor Award ceremony took place in Copenhagen, Denmark on 14 June.  

Industry

• Winners: Jan Tøpholm, Søren Westermann and Svend Vitting Andersen (Denmark)
  Tailor-made hearing aid
• Hugo Katus and Klaus Hallermayer (Germany)
  Blood test to diagnose heart attacks
• Jaap Haartsen (the Netherlands)
  Bluetooth technology

• Winners: Gilles Gosselin, Jean-Louis Imbach and Martin L. Bryant (France)
  New drug for hepatitis B treatment
• Jason Chin (UK) and Oliver Rackham (Australia) Re-engineering protein synthesis
• Mark van Loosdrecht, Merle Krista de Kreuk and Joseph Heijnen (the Netherlands)
  Waste-water treatment method

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)

• Winners: Manfred Stefener, Oliver Freitag and Jens Müller  (Germany)
  Portable direct methanol fuel cell
• Stefan Lehnert (Germany)
  Architectural cladding system
• Farouk Tedjar and Jean-Claude Foudraz (France)
  Method for recycling batteries

Lifetime achievement

• Winner: Josef Bille (Germany)
  Device for laser eye surgery
• Josef Theurer (Austria)
  Railway track-maintenance machinery
• Mario Moretti Polegato (Italy)
  Vapour-permeable shoe

Non-European countries

• Winners: John O' Sullivan, Graham Daniels, Terence Percival, Diethelm Ostry and John Deane(Australia)
  Wireless LAN for high-speed data transfer
• Stanford Ovshinsky (USA)
  Clean energy battery
• Federico Capasso (USA), Jérôme Faist (Switzerland) and team
  Quantum cascade lasers