The European Innovation Council (EIC) has selected 30 new projects under the 2025 EIC Pathfinder Challenges Call for cutting edge research projects delivering breakthroughs in four strategic areas: biotech for climate resilient crops and plant-based biomanufacturing; generative-AI based agents to revolutionise medical diagnosis; robot collectives; and waste-to-value devices – circular production of renewable fuels, chemicals, and materials.

The successful projects were chosen from 647 submitted eligible proposals and will receive around €118m of EU funding (on average €3.93m per project).  Participants predominantly come from higher education institutions (41%), private for-profit organisations (29%), and research organisations (24%).

Examples of selected projects:

INPROBED – pioneers a paradigm shift in plant biotechnology by moving from conventional gene editing to precision promoter engineering.

LUMINA – introduces a ground-breaking methodology built upon physics-informed attention mechanisms, advancing dynamic intelligence for predictive precision in lung cancer care.

SITEBOT – targets safer, faster and greener on-site building assembly by advancing autonomous robot collectives for timber-based construction.

PROPEL is developing a scalable and cost-efficient platform for producing protein-based materials and biocatalysts using synthetic cells.