"What I have learnt at The European House - Ambrosetti Forum over the years is that the world is changing, and you cannot sit by the lake and admire its beauty, but you have to climb the mountains and reach the peaks. And this is possible. For me it is a great lesson and I thank you very much for that."

Shimon Peres

The Initiative in brief

The Peres Heritage Initiative is a social award launched at the 43rd edition of The European House - Ambrosetti Annual Forum “Intelligence on the World, Europe, and Italy” to commemorate the legacy of Shimon Peres, whom for 24 years participated in our Annual Forum, among which his very last public appearance, becoming for us all a mentor and a source of great inspiration.

To pass on his legacy of technological innovation and pursuit of peace to the future generations, each year the Peres Heritage Initiative awards three young innovators at our Annual Forum. Recipients of the Peres Heritage Initiative are hosted at the Forum with a slot in the main conference program, where they have the chance to benefit from exposure to the global business, political and institutional communities, as well as to the media. 

The Peres Heritage Inititiave enjoys high institutional support. The award ceremony of the first three editions of the Peres Heritage Initiative were celebrated in 2017 by former Italian Prime Minister and currently EU Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni, in 2018 by former Italian Foreign Minister Enzo Moavero Milanesi, and in 2019 by former US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. In 2020 and 2021, due to the need of social distancing, the initiative took place in digital format only, while in 2022 the winners were awarded by Paolo Gentiloni, European Commissioner for Economy, and in 2023 they were welcomed by Samantha Cristoforetti, ESA astronaut.

In cooperation with Peres Center for Peace and Innovation, with the support of Teva

7

editions

21

Alumni

+600

MLN of dollars
raised

53%

awarded women

Eight edition (2024)

The upcoming edition will be held at the 50th Annual Forum “Intelligence on the World, Europe, and Italy” (Cernobbio, September 6-7-8, 2024).

How to apply

Fill in the form, answer the questions, and upload the requested documents.

APPLY



Target and eligibility

Young innovators and researchers below the age of 35, who have distinguished themselves in one of the following fields, are eligible for the Peres Heritage Initiative:

  • Pursuit of peace
  • Green Economy and Sustainability/Circular Economy
  • Entrepreneurship and inclusive business models
  • Innovation and Scientific Developments
  • Social Innovation
  • New Challenges in Education
  • Poverty eradication

  • Evaluation criteria

    The recipients are chosen according to their alignment with Shimon Peres’s vision on political activism:

    • Commitment. Self-dedication to a cause will be a major element of the Peres Heritage Initiative winners
    • Pursuit of Peace. Strong ethics and morality are the backbone of a functioning and peaceful society, the one Shimon Peres strived for
    • Entrepreneurship. Transforming visionary dreams into successful businesses, employment, and growth is one of the reasons Shimon Peres will be remembered
    • Impact. Those with the best intentions and utmost commitment are to be admired, but the award will only be presented to those who really make a difference
    • Inclusivity. In a world of alienation and rising inequality, those who distinguished themselves by tearing down walls – rather than building them – will be the leaders of tomorrow
    • Innovation. Facing new challenges entails finding new solutions. The global leaders of tomorrow will be those capable of thinking out of the box to elaborate elegant solutions to complex problems.


    Selection process

    Candidates are selected through two different channels, application and nomination, according to the following process.

    • Step 1. Opening of the Global Call for Innovators (from March 15, 2024, to May 31, 2024)
    • Step 2. Closing of applications and selection of 20 high potential candidates
    • Step 3. Second round of selections by The European House - Ambrosetti's employees, who will draw a short list of 8 candidates
    • Step 4. Third round of selections by the Advisors of the The European House - Ambrosetti's Cernobbio Forum, who will select the three final winners.


    Seventh edition (2023)

    The Seventh edition of the Peres Heritage Initiative took stage during the session «Empowering the generations of the future», moderated by Gianni Riotta, at the 49th edition of the The European House – Ambrosetti Annual Forum. Below are listed the names of the selected young people and their projects:

    Valeria Kogan, CEO and Co-Founder - Fermata (Israel)

    With a Ph.D. in bioinformatics, Valeria Kogan is the founder and chief innovation officer of agritech company Fermata and cofounder of Smartomica, a company developing an AI-based platform that assists oncologists in the diagnosis of severe cancer patients. The Tel Aviv-based Fermata has raised $2.6 million and operates a sustainable AI-based solution for automatic monitoring of plant health in greenhouses and on the fields. 

    Dina Radenkovic, Co-founder & CEO - Gameto (USA) 

    Dina Radenkovic grew up in war-torn Serbia, studied Math and Engineering in the United Kingdom and earned her medical degree at the University College of London. Before starting Gameto in 2021 with cofounder and serial entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky, she partnered with Harvard’s George Church genetic lab to fund research on ways engineered cells could boost women’s health. Infertility treatments can bring miracles, but they have plenty of downsides: big pills, painful hormone injections and dangerous side effects. Gameto has raised $40 million to make egg harvesting cheaper and safer using human stem cells to mature ova in a lab. 

    Mattia Barbarossa, Founder CEO & CTO - Sidereus Space (Italy)

    Mattia Barbarossa, 21, is the youngest aerospace entrepreneur in the world. A self-taught with a passion for natural sciences, astrobiology and space, he gave his first lecture on space exploration at the age of 13. At 15, Mattia and his team won an international competition organised by NASA, in which 3,500 teams from 50 different countries participated. Now, he is the Founder of Sidereus Space, a groundbreaking startup that closed a €1.5 million round and it is preparing the first launch planned for 2024. 

    Sixth edition (2022)

    The Sixth edition of the Peres Heritage Initiative took stage during the session «Empowering the generations of the future», moderated by Gianni Riotta, at the 48th edition of the The European House – Ambrosetti Annual Forum. Below are listed the names of the selected young people and their projects:

    Judit Giró Benet, CEO & Cofounder - The Blue Box

    Judit is a former Jr. Lab Specialist at the University of California Irvine and Associate Engineer at Roche Diagnostics. Currently, Judit is Cofounder & CEO of The Blue Box Biomedical Solutions S.L., a deep tech European start-up developing a medical device based on Artificial Intelligence, capable of detecting late-stage breast cancer using urine samples, with 95% accuracy. The Blue Box presents higher performance and safety features as compared to competing technologies. 


    Oksana Matiiash, CEO - Teach for Ukraine

    A lawyer by training with a Master of Public Policy from Oxford, Oksana currently serves as the CEO of Teach For Ukraine, one of the most prominent educational non-profits in Ukraine, working to eliminate education inequity in the country and now providing emergency support to Ukrainian children. In 2021, the President of Ukraine appointed her to serve on the Board of the Presidential Fund on Support to Education, Science, and Sports to launch the first state-funded scholarship program for Ukrainians to study abroad.


    Marco Pagani, CEO - Wizkey

    Marco is the CEO of the Italian Fintech Wizkey, the decentralised platform that enables the valorisation of illiquid assets, such as credits, by transforming them into safe, transparent and liquid tokens. Thanks to the blockchain technology, Wizkey can help reduce trading costs by disintermediating the credit market and automating processes that are usually lengthy and repetitive. Since 2018, he has also served as a lecturer in various masters in law (with particular reference to the blockchain technology), sanctioned by key institutions.

    Fifth edition - 2021 (digital)

    The Fifth edition was held during the session «Building the future through young talents», moderated by Mauro Ferrari, of the 47th edition of the annual Forum of The European House - Ambrosetti. Here are the names of the young winners and their projects:

    Stefano Casagrande, CEO and Co-founder of Davinci Healthcare, a telemedicine start-up that aims to improve the performance of healthcare systems at local level, providing medical assistance with a focus on preventive care, through monitoring, consulting and creating the patient’s digital twin. The start-up’s activity was strongly accelerated by the pandemic: in the second half of 2020, it managed 30,000 appointments and remotely monitored more than 2,000 patients affected by Covid-19.

    Naomi McKenzie, CEO and Co-founder of Kitro, a Swiss start-up founded in 2017 to meet the great challenge of reducing food waste and ensuring that food is valued. During her first-hand experience in the Food and Beverage industry, Naomi has witnessed the significant impacts of food waste and this lead her to a commitment to reducing waste in the industry.

    Or Retzkin, CEO and Co-founder of EyeControl, a start-up that was created to support individuals in therapeutic isolation, and improve their communication skills. Or serves as Major of the Israeli Army, collaborates as a lecturer at Tel Aviv University and is Alumnus Director of the 8200 Impact Accelerator. He holds a multidisciplinary degree in Physics and Economics from Tel Aviv University and a Master of Finance.


    Fourth edition - 2020 (digital)

    The Fourth edition of the Peres Heritage Initiative took stage during the session «The good News: the positive narrative the world needs», moderated by Alec Ross, at the 46th edition of the The European House – Ambrosetti Annual Forum. Below are listed the names of the selected young people and their projects:

    Chiara Cecchini, Cofounder of Future Food Network (Italy, sustainability). Working with a team of designers, chefs, scientists, nutritionists and economists, Florence-born Chiara Cecchini’s Future Food Network delivers international educational programs to build capacity on food and sustainability, engages the broader community though physical and digital activations, as well as helps major companies become more eco-friendly through R&D activities. Future Food Network is a purpose-driven company that supports food and beverage companies into their innovation journey towards more sustainable solutions, providing the tools and the skillset to perform SDG-centered innovation and regenerative design, as well as to assess outputs.

    Olga Dubey, Cofounder and CEO of Agrosustain, a Nyon-based start-up that develops and brings to market novel, efficient, and natural antifungal solutions to extend the freshness of fruits and vegetables infected with molds. Currently in the pilot phase, AgroSustain aims for a full market entry in 2022, by targeting the highly-traded exotic fruits segment first – avocado, banana, and pineapple – and then scaling up to other highly-stored crops, such as potatoes and carrots

    Lex Hoefsloot, Cofounder and CEO of Lightyear, a tech company on a mission to create clean mobility for everyone. Currently, they are developing their first solar car, Lightyear One, which will come to market in 2021. Since the launch of the company in 2016, Lightyear received many awards, grants and support from key investors. With over 32 patents pending and more than 100 pre-orders, they are scaling-up towards start of production.

    2019 - Third edition

    The third edition of the Peres Heritage Initiative took stage during the session «The good News: the positive narrative the world needs», moderated by Alec Ross, at the 45th edition of the The European House – Ambrosetti Annual Forum. The winners were awarded by Tsvia Peres Walden.

    Below are listed the names of the selected young people and their projects:



    Enass Abo-Hamed, Co-founder and CEO of H2G0 power - Isreal, Energy

    Co-founder and CEO at H2GO power, an award winning spin-out company from the University of Cambridge (UK) developing energy storage technologies, she is passionate about entrepreneurship and clean energy technology policy. She has 10 years of research and business experience in hydrogen production, nanotechnology, catalysis, renewable energy and energy storage.

    Listen to the interview


    Lucrezia Bisignani, Founder and CEO of Kukua – Italy, Social entrepreneurship / Education
    27 years olds, she is Founder and CEO of Kukua, an education entertainment company building a pan-African children’s franchise around Sema, Africa’s first animated child heroine. Sema is brought to life with an animated TV Series, educational games and toys. She was listed on the Forbes 30 under 30 2019 Social entrepreneurs list, and was selected to speak at WIRED 2016 as one of the women who are changing the world.


    Dhruv Ghulati, CEO of Factmata – United Kingdom, AI
    CEO of Factmata, a company he founded together with two professors of the universities of Sheffield and UCL, he is also one of the leading developers of Wikipedia. Factmata’s goal is to combat online disinformation found on the web by utilizing human-assisted artificial intelligence to identify abusive content, hate messages, spam, propaganda and fake news. The company was founded in 2017 and Dhruv Ghulati has already raised $1 million in seed funding.


    2018 - Second edition

    The second edition of the Peres Heritage Initiative took stage during the session «The good News: the positive narrative the world needs» at the 44th edition of the The European House - Ambrosetti Annual Forum. The initiative was awarded by Italian Foreign Minister Enzo Moavero Milanesi and Mr Chemi Peres.

    Below are listed the names of the selected young people and their projects:

    • Julian Melchiorri, CEO and Founder – Arborea (Italy)
    • Samantha Payne, COO and Cofounder – Open Bionics (UK)
    • Elad Walach, CEO and Cofounder – Aidoc (Israel)

    2017 - First edition

    The first edition of the Peres Heritage Initiative was inaugurated by the Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni and Chemi Peres, Shimon’s son, during the Gala Dinner of the The European House - Ambrosetti Annual Forum “Intelligence on the World, Europe, and Italy” (September 2, 2017).


    Below are listed the names of the selected young people and their projects:

    • Massoud Hansani, Co-founder and Managing Director at Mine Kafon Lab (Netherlands/Afghanistan) “Mine Kafon”, project for a wind-powered landmines detector
    • Sandra Rey, Founder and CEO at Glowee (France) “Glowee”, project “Harnessing bioluminescence for sustainable lighting solutions”
    • Christian Salvatore, Researcher, Institute of Molecular Bioimaging and Physiology (Italy) Artificial Intelligence for automatic diagnosis of Alzheimer and Parkison

    For further information:
    Matteo Polistina, matteo.polistina@ambrosetti.eu
    Tel.: +39 02 46753.314