Galileo Masters 2014 Polish Edition – experts meeting
On Friday the 29th of August, the team of experts has met to discuss submissions for the Polish region of ESNC. The jury shortlisted competition finalists and the winner. The European Space Navigation Competition (ESNC) is a pan-European event which aims to select and promote the best ideas related to satellite navigation (GNSS). It is commonly known as “Galileo Masters” which refers to the name of the main competition prize and to the European navigation system.
This competition is realized in a formula of regional editions where a region can be a country, a region within a country or even a city. This year’s edition has been organized by Kosmonauta.net Ltd. due to its own positive experiences in past ESNC events. It is the second time this competition is organized in Poland – the previous time happened in 2012. That editions’ results were very encouraging and clearly indicated that the creation of Polish applications using satellite data should be supported. In total in 2014 there were 26 regional editions including countries from outside of Europe, such as Israel and Mexico.
Proposals for Galileo Masters could have been submitted between the 1st of April and 7th of July. During that period ideas and project proposals were collected through the ESNC webpage. This competition was open to everyone including individuals, informal groups, start-ups, established commercial entities as well as research and academic groups.
In total all regions gathered 434 submissions. The Polish edition attracted 22 complete application proposals which resulted in the fourth place in number of submissions. The same amount of proposals was submitted to the German Hessia and Belgian Flanders regions. The Polish edition gathered more proposals than the Greek, Israeli, Austrian and Swiss regions.
After the 7th of July the review phase of submissions began. In each ESNC region a team of experts should have already met or soon will meet in order to select the best proposals and winners of the regional editions.
The Polish experts met on the 29th of August at the Polish Agency of Industry Development (Agencji Rozwoju Przemysłu, ARP) in Warsaw.
The Polish team of experts consists of seven professionals from various science, technological and business societies:
- Romuald Zadrożny – the director of the innovation department at the Polish Agency of Industry Development
- Tomasz Tarczyński – the president of the board of Radom’s Center of Innovation and Technology (Radomskie Centrum Innowacji i Technologii)
- Prof. Włodzimierz Lewandowski – the president of the Galileo System Group at the Committee of Space and Satellite Research PAN (Zespół ds. Systemu Galileo przy Komitecie Badań Kosmicznych i Satelitarnych PAN)
- Jakub Ryzenko – the director of the Crisis Information Center at SRC PAN (Centrum Informacji Kryzysowej przy Centrum Badań Kosmicznych PAN)
- Piotr Koza – the applications and services manager at Astri Polska Ltd.
- Marcin Kowalik – the co-founder of the Black Pearls capital fund
- Krzysztof Kanawka – the co-founder of Kosmonauta.net Ltd.
The team had a difficult task to accomplish, because most of the Polish submissions to ESNC 2014 were high quality. Due to this fact some experts had significantly different opinion about several submissions.
During the jury meeting all submissions has been evaluated. The best five submissions have been selected including the winner. Also the prize pool has been divided between the winners. The four best submissions will get a cash prize and the winner will receive a 10 000 PLN (almost 2500 Euro) cash prize.
At the next stage a representative from the Polish region will go the Netherlands for an international meeting of ESNC specialists. There the main and special prizes will be selected. The meeting will be held on the 15th and 16th of September at the European Space Agency ESTEC center.
The winners of ESNC 2014 will be announced at the Final Gala, which will be held on the 23rd and 24th of October in Berlin. At that event winners of regional editions will receive their prizes. Other regional prizes will be given on Regional Galas – the date of the Polish one is yet to be announced, but it will be held probably at the beginning of November.