BlueGuards Technologies, an innovative initiative created by students from the University of Seville's School of Engineering (ETSi), has been recognized with three awards at the European Innovation Academy (EIA) 2025, held in Porto last August. The team, comprised of Fabio Esmeralda Martínez, Carlos Rodríguez Castillo, Guillermo Reina Paneque, and Carlos Cabrera Maldonado, previously won an award in the Best Sustainable Project category at the ETSi's 1st Entrepreneurship Ideas Competition and were finalists in the 20th Entrepreneurship Ideas Competition organized by the University of Seville's Secretariat for Knowledge Transfer and Entrepreneurship (STCE).  

The EIA is Europe's largest academic accelerator for technological and digital entrepreneurship, with the participation of more than 400 students of 64 nationalities who worked in international teams under the mentorship of experts from Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, and with the support of universities such as Stanford and Berkeley. Over the course of three weeks, participants developed projects with an intensive focus on product validation, market strategy, and investor presentation.

BlueGuards Technologies became the most awarded team in this edition, receiving the Top Team Award, which recognizes the best overall performance, leadership, and collaborative capacity; the Patent Innovation Award, granted by Nixon Peabody LLP, which provides financial and legal support to obtain the startup's first patent; and the prestigious Alchemist Award, which recognizes the project with the greatest potential for global impact and grants priority access to the international incubator Alchemist Accelerator, a world leader in technology startups.

The team's project, called BlueCycle, is a technological module designed for the lithium industry and focused on water recovery. It is a modular, autonomous, solar-powered vacuum evaporation system capable of recovering ultrapure water from waste brines. Its application seeks to reduce water stress in the "Lithium Triangle" and offer a sustainable and replicable model for the industry. The technology is currently undergoing laboratory validation and is planned to begin field testing in 2026 in collaboration with universities and organizations in Chile and Argentina.

After completing the EIA, BlueGuards Technologies is moving toward new goals: consolidating its structure as a legal entity, piloting BlueCycle in real-world conditions, expanding its international collaboration network, and disseminating the social and environmental impact of its proposal. The team expressed its gratitude to the University of Seville for the logistical and financial support received, as well as to the mentors and organizers of the program, who have provided a decisive boost to the development of their project and their entrepreneurial journey.