Find out more about the winners of our regional Hesse Prize 2020 in the Copernicus Masters and Galileo Masters innovation competitions!
On Tuesday 8 December the winners in the two annual innovation competitions Galileo Masters and Copernicus Masters were announced in a festive and for the first time completely virtual award ceremony. The event was preceded by the Space Pitches on 7 December, where all national Galileo and Copernicus prize winners had the chance to introduce their ideas. You can still watch them here in case you want some inspiration for your own application this year – remember, an application is possible up until July 17th, find out more about the two competitions and the application process now.
The regional Hesse prizes
cesah and the ESA BIC Hessen & Baden-Württemberg supported the Galileo Masters and the Copernicus Masters by offering a regional prize in both competitions. The rewards included coaching and marketing support from cesah, as well as a cash prize of 3,750€ provided by our sponsors Hessen Trade & Invest/Digitales Hessen and the European Commission – thanks to their generous support, we were able to increase the cash prize to 5000€ in both competitions this year!
The award ceremony for the 2020 winners was held during the 10. Global Navigation meets Geoinformation 2021, cesah's yearly conference on satellite navigation and earth observation, where all wining teams were invited to pitch in front of a selected investor panel – find our more about the conference here.
Excitingly, the first three places in the Hesse Challenge of the Galileo Masters 2020 went to ESA BIC Hesse start-ups!
1st place: Autonomous space operations – Vyoma (Christoph Bamann, Luisa Buinhas, Dr. Srinivas Setty, Dr. Stefan Frey)
Vyoma aims to observe space debris using a smartly designed constellation of satellites, thereby increasing the reliability and accuracy of orbit estimations in real-time and reducing collision false positives (which are very expensive and inefficient to deal with). They use machine-learning algorithms to provide automated satellite operations (such as automated collision-avoidance maneuvers between satellites and debris). In particular, they believe that data will be the backbone of the future of the space economy.
2nd place: HA Time and Frequency Synchronization from Space – Melior Systems (Cesar Prados, Carmen Blasco and Sergiu Artene)
Melior Systems is developing a best-in-class timing technology to fulfill, once for all, the increasing synchronization requirements in different markets with a robust, scalable, and cost-efficient solution.
3rd place: Racing Hilde (Dario Hergarden, Isbel Isbel)
Racing Hilde helps Motor Fleet Companies to reduce accident related Costs using Space Technology forcing drivers to be more responsible with their ride.
Even more congratulations were in order as our second place winner Melior Systems also won the PRS (Public Regulated Service) Special Prize of the BMVI PRS Applications Challenge!
The Hesse Challenge of the Copernicus Masters 2020 was extremely popular – we were among the Top 3 Prize Partners with the highest number of submissions! Find out more about the winners of the Hesse Challenge in the Copernicus Masters 2020 below:
1st place: EOmatic (Ilya Bolkhovsky and Dr Lloyd Hughes)
After spending a year of their spare time on EOmatic, they now work full-time on something different. Rexplorer is a platform that analyses natural conditions, restrictions, and costs for renewable projects. They use real data and modelling to help local communities, individuals, and companies get started with energy production in a click of a button.
2nd place: Intelligent large-scale agricultural field delineation and monitoring (Matthias P. Wagner – now Panopterra @ ESA BIC Hessen)
Panopterra provides advanced Deep Learning and Artificial Intelligence products, services and platforms based on Earth Observation and geospatial data. The current focus lies on advanced use cases for Copernicus data in agriculture, primarily automatic field boundary and vector map extraction from Sentinel imagery on different temporal scales. Based on extracted field maps, Panopterra will establish a stack of advanced applications such as land use change detection, cropping pattern analysis, yield prediction and pest detection. We are especially proud to announce that Panopterra has since joined the ESA BIC Hessen as an incubatee!
3rd place: Carbonspace Platform (Hrishabh Sandilya, Ph.D. and Oleg Demidov)
CarbonSpace offers an accurate, remote and cost-effective platform for monitoring carbon footprint from different types of lands. The platform allows food, retail and forestry players to collect input data for life-cycle assessment, to set and track climate goals, and engage more stakeholders on their journey to net-zero. CarbonSpace founded by the team of serial entrepreneurs and space scientists is demonstrating a growing commercial traction and is finalizing the seed round.