The Belgian-French engineer Lionel Ries has won the European Inventor Award in Venice, in the ‘Research’ category. He received this prize, together with his four colleagues in an international research team, for his contribution to the development of a new European satellite navigation system. The innovation prize has been awarded every year since 2006 by the European Patent Office (EPO).
The European Union and the European Space Agency (ESA) are currently working on their own satellite navigation system, Galileo. This aims to be an independent alternative for military systems such as the American Global Positioning System (GPS) and the Russian GLObal NAvigation Satellite System (GLONASS). The prizewinning research team developed a technology for Galileo featuring radio signals that increase the accuracy of the navigation system and also improves interaction with other systems. Galileo currently has 18 satellites in circulation. This needs to reach 30 by 2020, when the system will become fully operational.
The 42 year-old Lionel Ries was born in Belgium and is of Belgian-French nationality. He studied at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and the Institut supérieur de l'aéronautique et de l'espace (SUPAERO) in Toulouse. He now works as a GNSS System Engineer at ESA in the Netherlands. Lionel Ries has 25 patents to his name and has participated in the writing of a hundred or so scientific publications, related mainly to satellite navigation.
