A visionary youth team from Cyprus, nurtured by the educational innovation hub STEMFREAK, had been selected to present their initiative Thalasat at the VeneTo Stars Challenge 2025, a prestigious European platform promoting innovation in the Blue and Space Economy. The students travelled to Venice from the 20th to the 22nd of May 2025 to present their proposal and compete against other youth teams from across Europe – and they won first prize!
So, what was the team’s proposal?
Thalasat is a next-generation, satellite-based marine monitoring system designed to detect and visualize threats to Mediterranean ecosystems—ranging from marine heatwaves to biodiversity loss. Powered by AI, Earth observation data from Copernicus, geolocation tools from Galileo and EGNOS, and…
