Millennium Graduate Student Contest

The contest offers emerging researchers a platform to present their work and make new connections. Participants representing Millennium Technology Prize partners, partnering universities and VTT have three minutes to give a pitch on how their research helps to solve a contemporary problem, promoting innovations for a better life.

First, the participants submitted videos of their pitches for the pre-screening round. Five pitches chosen for the grand final were presented in the Millennium Innovation Forum in Marina Congress Center on 26 October 2022. Read more about the winners here.

Winner of the 10.000€ grant

Sanaz Zarabi Golkhatmi, Aalto University: Inkjet printing, the savior of renewable energy technologies

Winner of the 5.000€ grant

Giovanni Misitano, University of Jyväskylä: Explainable multiobjective optimization

Winner of the 2.000€ grant

Elisa Werner, University of Turku: Engineering N2-fixing cyanobacteria for solar driven bioproduction

Finalists

Muhammad Asad Ullah, University of Oulu: Direct-to-satellite connectivity to combat digital divide

Ville Rissanen, VTT: Turning pollutants into products with next generation leaf-inspired cell factories

The three best pitches received awards for merit as encouragement grants in recognition of novel, impactful and innovative scientific activities. The grants were provided by the following generous supporters of the contest: