Leonard Johard, AI expert and co-founder of Calejo Industrial Intelligence, has been awarded the 2020 SKAPA Prize for Västernorrland. The prize money is a total of SEK 10,000.

Leonard Johard has developed an AI solution to optimize complex processes in the industry. The system can, for example, be used to test ideas that are very difficult or impossible to implement in reality.

– The innovation will make a strong contribution to efficiency and sustainability work in the industry and the scalability means that the system has good potential to achieve market success and profitability, says Sten Wigert, Innovation Advisor at Mid Sweden University and one of the county jury members.

In memory of Alfred Nobel

The foundation SKAPA is founded in memory of Alfred Nobel in 1985 and awarded its first prize in 1986. The prize is now Sweden’s largest and most prestigious innovation prize, where creative people are awarded every year, first in the region and then nationally. Behind the SKAPA foundation are the Stockholm Fair and the Swedish Inventors’ Association with the support of Almi Företagspartner AB, VINNOVA, the Agne Johansson Memorial Foundation and the Patent and Registration Office.

National ceremony 12 November

The county winners receive a prize money of SEK 10,000, including an opportunity to win the national prize, which, in addition to the honor, is SEK 500,000. The national award ceremony will take place at the SKAPA Innovation Gala on 12 November 2020. The gala will usually be held in Stockholm, but this year will be held digitally.

The purpose of the SKAPA award is to stimulate and create opportunities for established and new innovators to test their ideas in competition with others.

– In Västernorrland, we are good at creating new ideas, which results in patents and business opportunities. There is every possibility that this year’s winner can be tomorrow’s entrepreneur with great benefit to society, says Christin Borg, unit manager at the County Administrative Board of Västernorrland, and a member of the jury.

Third time lucky

This is the third time Leonard Johard wins a county competition for the SKAPA prize. In 2014 he won SKAPA’s Talent Award in Västernorrland for his revolutionary AI model for price forecasts of raw materials and in 2019 Gävleborg’s SKAPA award for the starup company Indivd’s patent for anonymisation of image data.