The European Inventor Award is one of Europe’s most prestigious innovation prizes. Launched by the European Patient Office (EPO) in 2006, it honors individual inventors and teams of inventors whose pioneering inventions provide answers to some of the biggest challenges of our times.

The winners are selected by an independent jury consisting of international authorities in the fields of business, politics, science, academia and research who examine the proposals according to their contribution towards technical progress, social development, economic prosperity and job creation. 

The 2022 European Inventor Award be livestreamed on Tuesday, 21 June – and this time two Israelis are finalists in the prestigious competition. Viewers in Europe and beyond will enter the world of inventing, meet the people driving change, and see just how ideas can shape our world.

Israeli scientists Ido Sella and the late Shimrit Perkol-Finkel – who died tragically last year in a road accident – were nominated for the EPO innovation prize for inventing ECOncrete, which makes it possible for local marine life to flourish while also strengthening infrastructure. The two marine biologists are well-known in the environmental field for creating marine building materials that enable more eco-friendly coastal infrastructure. The product, already used in 10 countries worldwide, helps the concrete industry lower its emissions and improve marine ecosystems around ports, sea walls and marinas. 

“Through research and innovation, Sella and Perkol-Finkel have transformed a standard construction material into a shelter for marine life,” said EPO president António Campinos, announcing the European Inventor Award 2022 finalists. “As marine construction is a growing sector, this invention has the potential to make a wide impact and improve the industry’s environmental footprint on a global scale.”

Sella and Perkol-Finkel were jointly named as one of the three teams for the European Inventor Award in the “Non-EPO countries” category which recognises inventions developed outside EPO member states. 

Concrete, which is traditionally used in marine infrastructure, can disrupt the chemical balance in marine environments and create flat terrains, producing an unfavourable environment for shellfish and corals which grow and make their home in the little crevices of the sea floor. In sharp contrast, invasive marine species that threaten local ecosystems tend to flourish around concrete.

In response to these challenges, Sella and Perkol Finkel’s solution contains concrete additives that prevent harmful chemicals from leaching into the seawater while also increasing the material’s compression force by up to 10%. The molds in which the concrete blocks are formed contain ridges and pores that create the necessary complexity for marine life to use for shelter. These ridges and pores attract shellfish larvae that prefer small openings to grow and survive in an ecosystem. The product’s liners, coatings and mold-modifying agents also recreate the micro-level surfaces required for marine larvae to settle. These organisms can then further strengthen the concrete because their skeletons encapsulate the surface and act as a biological glue.

“Think about barnacles and oysters and corals that create their skeleton from taking calcium ions from the water and using dissolved CO2 to create calcium carbonate for their shells,’’ said Sella. “When these sessile [immobile] organisms settle on the concrete and encapsulate it with calcium carbonate, they actually make it stronger. It was found that concrete covered by oysters can be 10 times stronger in terms of tensile strength than bare concrete.”

Sella and Perkol-Finkel first met at Tel Aviv University (TAU) where they were both studying the ecological impact of large marine construction projects. They wanted to find out if they could reformulate concrete and in 2011 began small-scale experiments to see how the substance reacted in the different temperate and tropical waters around Israel. In 2012, they co-founded an environmental infrastructure start-up, also called ECOncrete, with Sella as CTO and Perkol-Finkel as CEO and chief scientist. They began speaking about their experiments at conferences, with one talk attracting the attention of various US federal agencies that invited them to conduct further research along the Pacific and Atlantic coast. 

Between 2012 to 2014, they ran tests in multiple marine sites and labs in the Mediterranean and Red Seas, as well as along the Atlantic coast from Florida to northeast US. Sella says that he and Perkol-Finkel travelled between marine and freshwater testing sites every three months with little more than a backpack, and slept in student dormitories as they ran experiments. This generated the data they needed to submit their patent application in 2014. 

“It was really important for us that everything [around the intellectual property] would be protected before we applied the technology in a large scale for the first time,” added Sella.

The current success of ECOncrete was marked by tragedy last year when Perkol-Finkel died. She is survived by her husband and three daughters.  “It’s like losing your sister; there’s no way around it,’’ said Sella sadly. “We’d been studying together since we were students sitting at the same table in the lab in the university until the last day when she left the office…She’s greatly missed.”

More than 3,700 cubic meters of ECOncrete has so far been sold in over 40 locations, including shorelines and waterfronts in Spain, Monaco, the Netherlands and New York. The company is now in discussions to use it to protect wind farms and underwater pipelines in the North Sea. Perkol-Finkel and Sella have been widely recognized in both the construction and research communities for their work in applying ecological engineering to marine and coastal infrastructure. The invention has received the Biomimicry Institute’s Ray of Hope prize in 2020 and was named one of the most 100 valuable inventions of 2019 by TIME magazine.

In 2021, ECOncrete tripled its income for the third year in a row, raised a Series A venture funding and received a generous grants form EU Horizon 2020, the BIRD foundation and US Department of Energy. The company has 35 employees, a mix of engineers, biologists and concrete technology specialists. Its growth comes at a time when the world’s waterfronts have been extensively changed due to prediction of sea level rise and increased storminess, with the marine construction industry facing remarkable opportunities and challenges. The global underwater concrete market has been valued at about 320 billion euros in 2021 and is expected to grow more than 10.8% annually till 2030. 

With 6,400 staffers, the EPO is one of the largest public service institutions in Europe. Headquartered in Munich with offices in Berlin, Brussels, the Hague and Vienna, it was founded with the aim of strengthening cooperation on patents in Europe. Through the EPO’s centralized patent granting procedure, inventors are able to obtain high-quality patent protection in up to 44 countries, covering a market of some 700 million people. The EPO is also the world’s leading authority in patent information and patent searching.

The driving force behind the innovation process is people – people with a passion for discovery. Without their inquisitive minds, their quest for new ideas and their creativity, there would be no inventive spirit and no progress. As one of the most prestigious competitions of its kind, the European Inventor Award pays tribute to the creativity of inventors the world over, who use their technical, scientific and intellectual skills to contribute to technological progress, thereby driving and economic growth and improving people’s daily lives.