# Angele Giuliano

Angele Giuliano (born 30 January 1976) is a Maltese businesswoman and has been chief executive officer and managing director at AcrossLimits since 2001, as well as an expert evaluator for the European Commission and a European Innovation Council (EIC) ambassador and jury member. She is also a business angel engaged in mentoring start-ups and entrepreneurs in Malta and internationally.

## Biography

Angele Giuliano was born in Hamrun, the youngest of three sisters. After finishing her secondary education, she went on to study business and computing at the University of Malta. She later read for a master's degree in Creativity and Innovation at the Edward de Bono Institute for the Design and Development of Thinking (now renamed to The Edward de Bono Institute for Creative Thinking & Innovation). After graduating, Giuliano was invited to become a visiting lecturer at the University of Malta, tutoring students on eCommerce, business and technology.
In 2001, Giuliano founded AcrossLimits Ltd, an SME providing services in the fields of consultancy, research and IT development, and project management. As CEO and managing director of the company, Giuliano has developed eHealth and eLearning applications, consulted for a number of large public and private organisations on business innovation and internationalisation, and contributed to policy documents and white papers for clients including the European Parliament. Additionally, Giuliano has developed and managed a number of research and innovation projects with an array of European partners, and provides professional online development courses under the TrainingMalta brand.
Giuliano has acted as an expert evaluator for the European Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, the Ministry of Education, University and Research (Italy), the Cyprus Research and Innovation Foundation and the Malta Council for Science and Technology (now renamed to Xjenza Malta). Giuliano has published a number of papers on technology and European policies in innovation, most recently on entry-points into STEM fields for young people, as well as on detecting coeliac disease in children, and contributed to books on technology and education.
Besides her position at AcrossLimits, Giuliano is also a business angel at Go Beyond Investing and Rising Tide 1 Female Investment Group. In this role, she evaluates business pitches relating to start-ups and scale-ups for the European market. In 2009, she launched the SME Week in Brussels with the then-Commissioner for Enterprise and Industry, Günter Verheugen.

## Women Empowerment

Giuliano was President of the Foundation for Women Entrepreneurs from its establishment in 2001 until its dissolution in 2022. In this role, she lobbied for better representation of women in the business world, particularly in Malta and in Europe. She has also acted as an expert and panelist for a number of panels on European women in business, and had strong links with the European Institute for Gender Equality.
Giuliano has long been involved in business mentoring and giving advice to prospective entrepreneurs. She acts to encourage women to take up IT and enter into business, something which she has pursued as an Ambassador for the eSkills Malta Foundation, as a rapporteur in European Commission workshops on women in IT and through interviews in the press.
In her role as managing director of AcrossLimits, Giuliano has participated in several EU-funded projects which are targeted at women, such as Becoming a Woman Coder (2020-2022), BizMiz - Next Generation Women Technology Entrepreneurs (2019-2021), and 100 Mirrors Inclusive Tools for the Motivation of Enterprising Disabled Women (2016-2019).
Angele Giuliano is the main originator and one of the core partners in the implementation of the 2-year EU-funded Women TechEU flagship project (2024-2026), which is a large-scale FSTP (Financial Support to Third Parties) scheme supporting women leading deep tech start-ups from Europe to grow into tomorrow's tech leaders. €12M in total will be invested in equity-free grants, in order to support 160 women-led deep tech companies, along with the provision of business support services.
One of her other most recent gender equality oriented projects, WINBLUE - Empowering Women and Mainstreaming Gender Equality in the Blue Economy (2023-2025), intends to accelerate the empowerment of women in the blue economy, facilitating their participation in 5 sectors focused on the conservation and sustainable use of aquatic resources, namely:
* Circular blue bioeconomy and biotechnology
* Aquaculture and fisheries
* Offshore renewable energy
* Sustainable coastal tourism
* Cutting-edge enabling technology for protecting and restoring marine ecosystems

## Joint Ventures

Future Story is a new initiative by Angele Giuliano, managing director of AcrossLimits (Malta), and Kais Badran, CEO of Grey Matter Training (UAE), that is bringing future technologies to today's world, shortening the time between innovation and implementation. Giuliano and Badran are working on Healthtech, Deeptech and Greentech, scouting for innovations from Europe and making sure they reach their target markets in GCC and beyond.
Future Story facilitates investment, business development and market penetration whilst matchmaking between companies and investors/buyers from different markets.
In its matchmaking role, Future Story pairs start-ups that are leading the way in developing some of the most innovative technological solutions with investors looking to be part of their journey of growth and success. Future Story works with these start-ups to ensure that they are investor ready, whilst also working with investors to understand their interests, and bring to them an investment opportunity that is perfectly suited to their requirements.
Its current portfolio of innovative companies includes the following sectors:
* Quantum communications for critical infrastructures
* Oncology surgery equipment using nuclear medicine
* Digital twins for buildings and physical spaces
* AI-powered medical device for dialysis patients
* Wearable fitness and wellness monitoring devices
* Next-generation health food that is environmentally friendly
* Gut health diagnostics and tests with a holistic programme

## Digital Health

Angele Giuliano is very invested in digital health and has participated in several projects in this sector. The ITAMA project (ICT Tools for the diagnosis of Autoimmune diseases in the Mediterranean Area) was the largest paediatric test of coeliac disease in the world. Partly financed by the Interreg Italia-Malta programme, the main focus of the project was the creation of a database and innovative ICT tools to support the diagnosis of autoimmune diseases, in this case, focusing on coeliac disease and the implementation of Technology Transfer services of these ICT tools towards SMEs. The aim of ITAMA was to verify the effectiveness of less invasive testing methods to diagnose coeliac disease.
The project ran a screening of more than 20,000 children of paediatric age from Malta and Sicily in order to validate a new testing kit for coeliac disease and an AI-based Decision Support System to be able to help medical professionals in their diagnoses. The partners of this project were the Mater Dei Hospital and AcrossLimits from Malta and the University of Palermo and Messina from Sicily in collaboration with the Sicilian Regional Authority for Health.
ITAMA was followed by ITAMA_CAP in order to carry out more screening in Malta and Sicily.
Thanks to the ITAMA project, several hundred children in Malta and Sicily will live better lives, since they now know if they are coeliac or not and adapt their diet accordingly.

## Honours

* 1998: Winner of the EuroMed Multimedia Award, heading a team of 15 people.
* 2018: Winner of the Malta Innovation Summit Award for the social enterprise iSmart.
* 2020: Horizon Malta Awards to AcrossLimits for Best Impact on Health, Security or Smart Mobility Award for the project BioExcel2 Centre of Excellence for Computational Biomolecular Research.
* 2020: Best Promotion of STEM Award for AcrossLimits for the project ER4STEM.
* 2021: National Champion for the European Innovation Council in Malta, along with Professor André Xuereb. She has been a member of the EIC jury since 2018.
* 2021: EIC Ambassador in recognition of her influence in the European innovation ecosystem.
* 2024: Reappointed as EIC Ambassador for the third year in a row in recognition of her work in relation to the innovation ecosystem in Europe.

## Academic Papers

Angele Giuliano also contributes to several academic and project papers related mainly to education, technology, health and business. Her full list of papers can be found on https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2281-6970.

## Personal life

Angele Giuliano lives with her Finnish partner Antti Heikkilä on a sailing boat in Greece for most of the year, travelling around the Greek islands as a digital nomad. When not on her sailing boat Gelene, she spends some time with her family in Hamrun, Malta, or enjoys the colder climate in Finland.