The Norwegian jury

The Norwegian jury will select the Norwegian candidate for the Nordic Innovation Award. The jury members have extensive experience from various innovation activities in the business world.

Jury members

Børge André Hilden
Senior Advisor at Acapo Onsagers
Børge is a senior advisor in the merged IP advisory company Acapo Onsagers. He has 20 years of experience in intellectual property law with a focus on patents and a special interest in strategic/business aspects. He is a European patent attorney and chairman of the "Association for Norwegian IP Advisers" (FONIP).
Børge has a background as a civil engineer in electrical engineering, and he has broad experience from Norwegian research activities as a researcher and project manager at the Norwegian Defence Research Institute and from Norwegian industry, including as a project and section manager at Alcatel.
Toril A. Nagelhus Hernes
Pro-Rector for Innovation at NTNU and member of the Rector's leadership team
Toril is responsible for commercialization, TTO and student innovation and entrepreneurship. Member of the national reference group Horizon Europe (EIC, EIE, EiT: Innovation Norway/Research Council of Norway), head of the expert group for innovation under the European University Association (EUA) and member of Cesaer (Universities for Science and Technology in Europe).
Ingvild Meland
Director of Strategy and Public Relations at Nysnø
Ingvild has been Director of Strategy and Public Relations at Nysnø since 2021. She was previously Program Director for the energy meeting place ONS with responsibility for strategy, content production and networking. She also has more than 10 years of experience in the energy industry through various roles related to energy market analysis, strategy and license follow-up at Petoro and Eni Norway.
Meland holds a Master of Science in Economics from Bergen School of Economics (NHH) with a specialization in economics. Ingvild has experience with board work in several industries, and is Honorary Consul for Finland in Stavanger. In Nysnø, Ingvild works with strategy and business development, communications and public relations.
Jan Morten Ertsås
CEO of Siva
Jan Morten is CEO of Siva. He holds a degree in civil engineering from NTNU, and has been CEO of Siva – a company for industrial growth since 2023. Jan Morten has previously been CEO of Store Norske in Svalbard and investment director at Investinor. He has also been CEO of the consulting company Safetec Nordics and vice president, Offshore Oil & Gas Solutions at Safetec's American parent company ABS Consulting.
Ertsaas has extensive experience from the international oil and gas industry, and has held various leadership positions within project management, research, technology and knowledge management at Statoil. He has also been platform manager at Statfjord, and has international project management experience from a position as pipeline manager on Statoil's Pars project in Iran.
Salvador Baille
general manager at Intelis and partner at Aggrator
Salvador holds an M.Sc. in Engineering from ETSEIB, an MBA from ICT in Barcelona and a Master in Corporate Finance from BI in Oslo. He has over 25 years of experience with innovation, technology and product development in Spain, Germany and Norway. For the last 10 years he has been an independent analyst and advisor within innovation and technology management. He is also a partner in Aggrator, the startup accelerator of the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) with a focus on agrifoodtech and environmental technology.
Salvador has previously taught innovation and IT at Østfold University College and has served on the organizing committee of AI+, Norway's largest conference on applied artificial intelligence, in 2021, 2022 and 2023. He is an active speaker and writes regularly in business and technology media such as E24, DN and Shifter and on his own blog.
Tina Stiegler
Divisional Director, Social and Business Development at Innovation Norway
Tina has extensive experience in the business world, including 18 years at Schibsted, where she was, among other things, Head of Next Media and COO for Schibsted's Norwegian operations. She has also been Executive Vice President at Umoe, and has board experience from, among others, Posten Bring, Santander Consumer Bank, TV2 and smaller technology companies. She has previously been associated with StartupLab as a mentor/advisor. Tina Stiegler holds a Master of Science in Economics from the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH).
Kathrine Myhre
Director General Norwegian Industrial Property Office (NIPO)
Kathrine Myhre has extensive experience in innovation, business and export strategy, and the establishment and scaling of companies.

Kathrine holds a Master’s degree in Political Science from the University of Reading (UK) and the University of Oslo (UiO). During her studies, she was an active student politician with a strong interest in innovation, and she made her mark as President of the Student Parliament at UiO in 1993.

She began her professional career at the University of Oslo, where she worked with intellectual property rights (IPR), building an innovation culture and creating businesses based on new university research. She was one of the initiators behind Birkeland Innovasjon in 2004 (now Inven2, the university’s technology transfer office, TTO), where she served as Director of Innovation for several years. Later, she became Director of Innovation at the research and business park IT Fornebu.

In 2009, she founded the health cluster Norway Health Tech as a non-profit member organization, focusing on innovation, business development, and international scaling of health companies. In 2015, Norway Health Tech was awarded Norwegian Centre of Expertise (NCE) status through Innovation Norway’s cluster program.

Kathrine assumed the position of Director General of the Norwegian Industrial Property Office (Patentstyret) on 1 January 2021. She also serves as Deputy Chair of the Board of the Export Strategy Council (Eksportstrategirådet).