The global IU35 award began in 1999, on the occasion of MIT Technology Review’s 100th anniversary. Because one way to understand where the world is going is to pay close attention to the people taking it there. Since then, Innovators Under 35 has grown from an annual list into a global search – and a community spanning countries, disciplines and generations of innovators.

Innovators Under 35 looks beyond credentials, titles and polished campaigns. We seek researchers, founders, inventors and technologists whose work represents a genuine advance – whether they are rethinking how we produce energy, developing new ways to diagnose disease, building more capable machines or applying existing technologies in ways no one had considered before.

Clear and compelling communication matters, of course. But we value even more the ambition behind the work, the focus required to pursue it, and the ability to make its significance understood.

Because what matters to us is not innovation for innovation’s sake. It is work capable of reaching beyond the walls of a laboratory, the boundaries of an industry or the interests of a single market.

The question we care about most is deceptively simple:

“Could this improve something that matters to humanity?”

Over the years, that question has led us to people at remarkably early stages of their careers, but impressively advanced level of their innovation projects.

Our past honourees have made it possible to diagnose genetic conditions in hours rather than weeks, produce aviation fuel from carbon dioxide, reduce the carbon footprint of cement, cool buildings through advanced materials, and apply additive manufacturing to rocket propellants – among many other advances.

Through IU35, they have found themselves on the same stage and inside the same network. Many would never otherwise have crossed paths.

The award places a name on a list because exceptional work deserves recognition. But our community extends that recognition across years and continents, connecting people whose ideas, research and technologies are changing how the world works.

Through its regional editions, MIT Technology Review has expanded that community around the world.

European innovators, connected

Europe has extraordinary scientific and technological depth, but also a great complexity in creating connections. It does not operate as a single innovation ecosystem: talent is distributed across countries, languages and institutions – from research universities and engineering schools to hospitals, startups, industrial companies and independent laboratories. A breakthrough in Copenhagen may have much in common with one taking shape in Milan, Paris, Lisbon or Warsaw, even if the people behind them have never crossed paths.

Innovators Under 35 Europe exists to create those crossings. It is about making European talent more visible, to Europe itself and to the wider world, while creating contact between the people shaping the next generation of science and technology.

Strong innovation ecosystems are built not only on brilliant individuals, but on the connections between them. That is why we search across the continent for exceptional people, give their work the recognition it deserves, and bring them into a community and create new synergies.