We recently attend the
EIT Summit in Brussels, where we had a chance to catch up with
Maria Tsavachidis, CEO of
EIT Urban Mobility, one of the organisation's so-called KICs.
What is a KIC, you ask?
As the EIT explains
on its website, the acronym stands for "Knowledge and Innovation Communities" and they are essentially Europe-wide networks centred around addressing a specific societal challenge; from sustainable energy to climate change to healthy food and green transport.
EIT Urban Mobility is among the earliest such communities, started in January 2019 to "encourage positive changes in the way people move around cities in order to make them more liveable places".
EIT, which is a body of the European Union, provided co-funding of
up to €400 million for the period 2020 to 2026 to make some moves (pun intended).
In the interview, Tsavachidis provides some further background on EIT Urban Mobility and its
raison d'être, the size of the problem that needs tackling and the three main initiatives that it's outlined to do so, examples of interesting startups and partners it's working with, and much more!