Swiss-Greek inventor is a finalist for the European Inventor Award 2026

According to the European Commission, data centers are considered the central infrastructure of our time. They support cloud computing, artificial intelligence and digital services - but already consume around 1.5 % of global electricity. This demand is expected to more than double by 2030. Against this backdrop, better data storage and processing technologies are becoming increasingly important. Evangelos Eleftheriou and his team have dedicated themselves to this challenge for decades and have now been selected by an independent jury as a finalist in the «Industry» category of the European Inventor Award 2026.

Understanding noise instead of ignoring it

A central problem of modern digital storage media is the high data density: the closer the data signals are to each other, the greater the susceptibility to interference during readout. With «Noise-Predictive Maximum Likelihood (NPML) Detection», Eleftheriou developed an approach that not only treats interference in the data signals as unavoidable background noise, but also models and predicts it. This method became the key technology for modern read channels in magnetic high-density memories.

During his time at IBM Research, Eleftheriou applied this knowledge to magnetic tape systems - a medium that, despite its age, still plays a key role in the long-term archiving of large amounts of data. His team improved the positional accuracy, error correction and synchronization of the systems so that they function reliably even with damaged or partially corrupted data. «Magnetic tapes may not be the first thing you think of when you think of modern technology. But they still play an important role. When large organizations need to archive their data reliably, they store large volumes of data on tape. So magnetic tapes still serve as the backbone of extensive data archives,» explains Eleftheriou.

Calculate directly in memory

More recently, Eleftheriou has been focusing on in-memory computing (IMC) at his company Alexera AI. This technology makes it possible to perform certain computing operations directly in the main memory without having to transport data back and forth between processors and memory. This reduces delays and lowers energy consumption - a decisive advantage, particularly in AI applications, where large data sets often have to be processed in real time.

«If a solution only requires a fraction of the electricity compared to a competing system, this is very advantageous ceteris paribus. And that doesn't just apply from an economic point of view. We can't afford to waste energy unnecessarily on computing processes and simply pay the price later,» says Eleftheriou.

European Inventor Award 2026

Eleftheriou stands alongside two other finalists in the «Industry» category: the Italian inventor Giuseppe Crippa and his team for an advanced process for producing test cards and the Greek-Swedish scientist Angeliki Triantafyllou for an enzymatic process for improving oat milk. The European Inventor Award was established by the European Patent Office (EPO) in 2006 and is considered one of the most prestigious innovation awards in Europe. The winners will be announced on July 2, 2026 at an award ceremony broadcast live from Berlin. An audience award will also be presented, which will be voted on by the public together with the independent jury. The public vote will run from May 12, 2026 until the ceremony on July 2, 2026.

Further information on the European Inventor Award: www.epo.org