Falling Walls Falling Walls Science Summit 2022

How Molecular Plant Physiology Creates Drought Tolerant Crops Resurrection plants are not only the lazy gardener’s best friend, but a real hope for the fight against hunger in the world. While most plants have a phase in their life cycle in which tissues can survive drought conditions, only resurrection plants…

Labor reflects upon our changing understanding of what we are. Microbes in and on the human body outnumber human cells and complicate any simplistic sense of (an indivisible) self. The smell of the perspiring body is not just a human scent, unless we are willing to redefine what we mean…

My artistic processes have led me to recognize myself and all – symbolically – as a drop, as a center, as the very particle with which the universe has been created. It has been a constant exercise, a path of recollection and expansion. My trips as I usually call them,…

Zhu is a pioneer in bringing AI and data science together with earth observation for retrieving valuable geoinformation from satellite remote sensing and other data sources. Her big geodata analytics algorithms enable breakthroughs in geoscientific and environmental research. Her current endeavor is the fusion of petabytes of data from satellites…

Nominated by: Mauro Fasano, University of Insubria Presented by: Massimo Caccia

The nominating institution Nanyang Technological University on the breakthrough: E-waste is a growing global problem owing to its toxicity and environmental impact. Pioneering “waste-for-waste” approach demonstrated to tackle both food waste and electronics waste towards circular economy of zero waste in which resources are used for long as possible. Unique,…

PRESENTED BY Vincenzo Cerullo NOMINATED BY University of Helsinki Tags: Cancer, Immuno Therapy

In the past decades, semiconductor lasers have found their ways into many aspects of everyday live. They are used for fiber internet or in smartphones, but are also found in less obvious areas like in self-driving cars or biological tissue analysis. A reason for their success is that these lasers…

The nominating institution UCLA on the breakthrough:  The production of ordinary portland cement (OPC), the binding agent used in concrete, accounts for 9% of global CO2 emissions. Our breakthrough technology, CO2Concrete, replaces OPC with a reinvented binder that “absorbs” CO2 upon exposure to flue gas waste streams, reducing CO2 emissions.…

Carried out over 10 years by artist-economist duo Chow and Lin, The Poverty Line visually documents the type and amount of food a person living by the poverty line can buy per day in different case-study Countries. The photographic study is based on data analysis and socio-economic research on lowest-income…

Guided by a theologician, a team of Industrial Design students set out to redesign core rituals of the Catholic religion. They created seven objects – a weight-shifting seesaw that counterbalances people’s weight, a color-changing flame as a feedback system for prayers, a remotely lid light that gives people a sense…

Theo Issitt’s project investigates gases released by cells in different ‘stress’ conditions to model diseases such as cancer. Changes in these gases can then be investigated in the breath to look for disease.

Nominated by: BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt Presented by: Liz Madaras

Nominated by: Peter Leibinger, TRUMPF Presented by: Michael Förtsch

This Winners Session features the Top 10 breakthroughs in the Engineering and Technology category. Several of the presented projects are developing eco-friendly materials and Clean Energy solutions, including safer, more energy-efficient batteries and a new method of cement production that reduces CO2 emissions, thereby ensuring that housing is both affordable…

Dosy is an online platform that teaches women and girls how to ride scooters and bicycles.

PRESENTED BY Varinder Singh NOMINATED BY Chitkara University  

Julia Leduc, co-founder and CEO of Anymate Me, explains why her start up Anymate me is the future of Video Production for academic and corporate training. Anymate Me is a science-oriented deep tech start-up based in Germany. Our mission is to revolutionize linear, costly and time-consuming video production and editing…

Our products are Artificial limbs. Now we have a design of knee and we started to build it. We are aiming to design more and build it too. Tags: Diversity, Engineering, prosthetic limbs.

The two most common mental health issues, depression and anxiety, are also the leading cause of disability globally. The economic impact and societal ramifications are increasingly being recognised and a cultural and policy shift in the way mental health disorders are perceived and tackled is already underway. However, much remains…

Late-stage detection of breast cancer has as a consequence cachexia and chemotherapy which is the main treatment modality. These reduce the survival rate of patients. Borelle Mafogang proposes valorizing some local foodstuffs via the development of a dietary supplement for the management of breast cancer and chemotherapy sequelae.

Young Tinker Academy is a tinker space where school students collaborate and learn hands-on skills of the future. We work with indigenous communities to build tinker spaces for students and youths with content in the vernacular Indian languages. We have impacted the lives of 1,50,000+ students and youths in rural…

An ebook service for people with dyslexia, blindness, cerebral palsy, and other reading barriers. Bookshare is a nonprofit global ebook service for people with reading barriers. People with dyslexia, blindness, cerebral palsy, and other reading barriers can customize their experience to suit their learning style and find virtually any book…

The RTLS project can track inventory in order to help industries ensure real-time tracking of the right product, in the correct quantity, at the right time, and at the right place against the lowest costs.

The nominating institution AIT on the breakthrough: The presented bi-modal sensing device allows for the first time simultanously to distinguish between mass-uptake and electrical surface changes at biological binding events. Until now, antibody and antigen interactions and the docking of bacteria or virus to tissue in the human body was…

Maureen Gumbo proposes utilising porous materials which can absorb water vapour and condense it into usable clean water to combat the shortage of clean water.

Fabrication of a 3D bioprinting macro vascular tree that will be connected with the cells assemble micro capillary network to study the behavior of metastatic cells through the endothelial barrier. Tags: Bio-Tech.

McDade developed and validated a method for quantifying SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibodies in finger stick dried blood spot samples. This approach allows people to self-collect samples from home, and then mail them to the lab for analysis. McDade’s scientific aim and public health goal is to expand understanding of predictors of…

The Children Math-Art Exhibits were started by Experience Workshop and Nelson Mandela University in South Africa. The goal is that children themselves actively explore new sources of maths and art education through transdisciplinary artworks, which express various connections between mathematics and arts. Any child could submit artworks for the open…

Metin Sitti is working on wireless miniature medical robots that can be used for local on-demand drug delivery, fluid pumping, biopsy, and vessel clogging. At Falling Walls, Sitti gave insights into his research, explained how these tiny robots function, and presented them live.

Mathematical structure permeates the natural world. Dr. Fathauer’s work blends mathematics with organic and inorganic forms from nature. This synthesis allows him to create novel and compelling artworks, realized as prints and ceramic sculptures. These derive their appeal from juxtapositions such as complexity and order; movement and balance; and geometric…

Randall Platt is an Associate Professor of Biological Engineering at the ETH Zurich. Platt studied biomedical engineering at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. In 2011 he obtained an MPhil from Imperial College London in material science and in 2016 a PhD from MIT in biological engineering. After…

How the Internet Opens a New Era of Creative Expression Beyond Geographic, Social, Economic and Political Boundaries “Censorship is saying: ‘I’m the one who says the last sentence. Whatever you say, the conclusion is mine.’ But the internet is like a tree that is growing. The people will always have…

Our project’s achievements strongly suggest that LDH has a high potential for treating mine wastewater since its application may contribute significantly to reduce energy, cost and save landfills.   Tags: Environment & Nature, Green Tech, Environment science, Water treatment, Chemistry.

Ready to take a deep dive into the Top 10 breakthroughs in the Physical Sciences category? This Winners Session will take you from the bottom of the ocean all the way to outer space to explore the most remote living environments. Learn about new ways to observe climate-related changes on…

An estimated 4.63 billion terabytes of data will be generated daily by 2025. To accommodate this staggering number, low-power magnetic media with higher data density and faster I/O speeds is crucial. 2D magnets are essential for next-gen magnetic random-access memories (MRAMs). 2D-MRAMs marrying ultracompactness to ultralow power consumption are key…

There is no science without collaboration, and in a world that is not only facing a global pandemic, but also a global climate crisis, international cooperation is needed more than ever. But how can a unifying vision be forged? How can barriers between nations be resolved to support global big…

Janasuddi, meaning Smart News, is a audio digest in Kannada, a non-English Indian language, on science. Produced every day and distributed through WhatsApp and Anchor podcast director, the audio digest presents a curated summary of latest research from peer reviewed journals from across the world. The project started as an…

Science Escape Room offers a non-traditional engaging learning experience in different fields of science. Science Escape Room is a virtual room in which science is an amazing experience to explore. Students are encouraged to take an active role in order to develop their science knowledge and computer skills. They learn…

In this Falling Walls Breakthrough Conversation, digital participants had the chance to engage in a live conversation with John Jumper, Falling Walls Breakthrough of the Year 2022 in the category of Engineering and Technology. He discussed the Artificial Intelligence protein folding system AlphaFold which he developed together with his team…

ConCiencia Mobile Labs is a fleet of 3 fully equipped Science Technology Engineering Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) mobile vehicles that were specially designed to travel to all the regions of Chile. This program aims to promote STEAM education in rural schools, creating active and collaborative learning experiences through research, innovation…

Donna Strickland is one of the recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics 2018 for developing chirped pulse amplification-which is the current state-of-the-art technique used by most of the highest-power lasers in the world. In her talk, Strickland was talking about the relevance of lasers, the relationship between light and…

Carbfix is an academic-industrial partnership that has developed a novel approach to capture and store CO2 by its dissolution in water and its injection into subsurface basalts. Once in the subsurface, the injected CO2 reacts with the host rock forming stable carbonate minerals, thus providing for the safe, long-term storage…

How Micro- and Optoelectronics Lead to Transparent and Paper Transistors If you are happy that your mobile phone does not weigh 1 kilogram and cost $4000 like the first handheld model from 1973, you will appreciate the efforts of Elvira Fortunato, who is working on making technology as cheap and…

By utilizing nanoscale light sources as artificial photonic neurons, Matěj Hejda and his team aim to develop a novel, light-powered, high speed hardware with a brain-inspired architecture for energy-efficient AI computation.

We provide evidence that reducing the distribution of drugs (e.g diclofenac) with proven CV risk in the heart using nanoparticles will reduce their CV complications without compromising the efficacy.   Tags: Bio-Tech, Med-Tech, Health Sciences.

We developed a catheter delivery system based on a balloon catheter with integrated microneedles on top of it, enabling localized delivery of therapeutics into targeted blood vessel walls. Tags: Bio-Tech, Engineering, Med-Tech, Mobile Health.

Delay Lines (feedback) draws from our research and work with silica-based mediums such as glass, integrated circuits, and soft robotics. Silica – one of the most common substances on Earth – is formed when massive stars explode. This stardust permeates our bodies and all aspects of our built world through…

PRESENTED BY Max Gulde NOMINATED BY Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e. V. Tags: Smart Farming, Space Tech, Earth Observation, Ag Tech, Climate Tech, Deep Tech, New Space, Precision Farming, Food Security

Treating cancer with bacteria A robotic system for automated inventory management, a high-resolution 3D printer, a waterless body bath, a blood testing platform for prostate cancer, a project for breeding insects and a sensor for fresh food: What do these inventions have in common? For once, they are just a…