An artificial intelligence pioneer whose technologies are reshaping industrial sustainability was tonight named “Young Innovator of the Year at the 2025 Innovation Awards.
Leonard Nicusan, researcher at the University of Birmingham and co-founder of EvoPhase Ltd, received the prestigious accolade, after a year-long process of voting and judging, at a finale awards dinner attended by 500 people at Eastside Rooms in Birmingham.
Reacting to news of the win, Leonard said: “It is an absolute honour to have won and confirmation that you can take your research from a pure academic standpoint and take it to industry and have a world-leading impact.”
World’s first geographically optimised wind turbine
Leonard is pioneering AI technologies that reshape industrial sustainability. His inventions include the Birmingham Blade, the world’s first geographically optimised urban wind turbine, and breakthroughs with Unilever that achieved tenfold efficiency gains in mixing. He champions open science, publishing global open-source libraries adopted across industr y and academia. From Birmingham to multinational projects with AstraZeneca and Johnson Matthey, his innovations deliver local creativity with worldwide impact.
“We have developed a patent-pending technology which can optimise industrial processes, from wind turbines to pharmaceutical blenders or biochemical reactors, and achieve vastly improved power draws and mixing rates,” said Leonard.
“We have developed a patent-pending geometric optimisation pipeline which can take any industrial system, be it a vertical-axis wind turbine, a biochemical reactor or a pharmaceutical blender, and discover designs vastly improved and far beyond what human designers might manually achieve.”
Innovation Awards are open to businesses, organisations and individuals in the UK
Dr Richard Fallon, CEO of the Technology Supply Chain (TSC) membership organisation, which runs the annual Innovation Awards, said: “Congratulations to Leonard Nicusan. We had more entries than ever before this year, and the competition for each category was stronger than it’s ever been.
“Each winner can be justifiably proud and can look forward to ongoing support from the 5,000-member TSC network as they chart their course to future success.”
The Innovation Awards recognise, celebrate and reward the businesses, organisations and individuals who are dedicated to innovation.
The awards are open to innovative individuals, businesses and organisations – including universities, local councils and catapults – based in the UK.
