National Innovation Award 2025: Bracco Foundation awards the Special Prize to CLEAR

The National Innovation Award (“PNI 2025”) co-organized by the PNICube Network and the University of Ferrara, returns on 4 and 5 December to the Ferrara Expo space, bringing together the best projects from the regional Start Cups. In what is one of the most important start-up competitions in the country, researchers, students, and young innovators from Italian universities compete in four areas: Cleantech & Energy; ICT; Industrial; and Life Sciences–MedTech.

One of the partners of the initiative is Centro Diagnostico Italiano (CDI), which was part of the jury. The competition also saw the involvement of the Bracco Foundation, which has always been a committed supporter of innovation, research and talent, and was present to award the Bracco Foundation Special Prize.

The National Innovation Award for 2025 went to CLEAR, a start-up founded in the Chemistry Department of the University of Milan. CLEAR has developed a floating water purification technology based on heterogeneous photocatalysis that is capable of eliminating micropollutants such as drugs, pesticides, and PFAS without the use of electricity or chemical additives. The device, activated by sunlight, offers a sustainable solution to one of the most pressing environmental emergencies: the presence of micropollutants in water.

The project, which came out of the work of the ISMER research group, is led by Vincenzo Fabbrizio (CEO, PhD student) and Melissa Greta Galloni (CTO, research fellow), under the coordination of Professor Claudia Bianchi.

In addition to the technological value and scientific soundness of the CLEAR project, the Bracco Foundation chose to recognize CLEAR also for its governance structure, which is an object lesson in the sort of gender equality and inclusion that has always been close to the heart the Foundation.