News in Brief

The European Commission has unveiled the semi-finalists for the prestigious 2025 prize for Women Innovators celebrating exceptional women entrepreneurs driving innovation and shaping the future of Europe. Dr. Fanny Bardé is a French entrepreneur living and working in Belgium. She holds a PhD Material Science degree from Picardie Jules Verne University in Amiens, France. When she left university, she worked for Duracell in Boston in America where she researched the development of Ni-Zn batteries.

For 14 years, Dr Bardé was Technical Manager for R&D – Advanced Technology at Toyota Motor Europe (TME) working on future battery technology for xEVs (PHEV, HEV, BEV). She was also responsible for initiating and managing private as well as public funded projects with external parties and for coordinating internal trans-company battery projects. She prepared Toyota Europe’s battery roadmap and aligned it with the Toyota Global R&D roadmap.

Dr Bardé went on to work at imec in Belgium where she managed the Solid-State Battery Programme. She supervised large commercially funded projects and coordinated SOLiDIFY, a complex, 14 partner European H2020-LC-BAT1 public funded project, securing 7.8 million euro.

In February 2022, Dr Bardé co-founded SOLiTHOR, a next-generation battery technology company with a vision to making sustainable travel a reality because of the impact SOLiTHOR’s innovative breakthrough technology will have on travel, in the air, on sea and on land in the not too distant future.

Dr Bardé said: “We started this company with a team of 2 – my co-founder and I. Today we have 31 – from 18 different nationalities, 35% of whom are women – which means a third of our management team are women. I am so pleased that we are developing a product that helps fight climate change by reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.”