Falling Walls Falling Walls Science Summit 2022

Nominated by: Hebrew University, Yissum – the technology transfer company of Hebrew University Presented by: Kristina Trahtman

COVID-19 – Current Trends in Vaccine Research Falling Walls Circle Tables will give the spotlight to world-leading scientists, science strategists and policy-makers from academia, business and politics discuss how we can apply science, research and innovation to get the world moving again. Vaccinations provide a pathway to recovery from the…

How Security Studies Explore the Roots of Terror What is it that motivates a formerly non-religious person to plan and commit a massacre declared as an act of god? What are the factors that attract young Europeans to a career as islamist fighters on the battlefields of Syria? These are…

PRESENTED BY Tejas Kusurkar NOMINATED BY Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur Tags: Battery Technology, Zinc

Emerging telerobotics concepts enable AI for universal assistance robots, as big data is gathered beyond lab walls. This way, robots learn new skills and increase failure tolerance during operation.   Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Climate change, Covid-19, Digital Health, Engineering, Food & Agriculture, Resilience, Robotic, Space & the Universe.

Rhys Pirie won first place at the Falling Walls Lab Finale 2019 with his pitch on Breaking the Wall of Broken Glass. Rhys convinced the jury in three minutes by presenting a low-cost process which turns ‘waste’ glass into high-value products such as detergents, tyres, and even toothpaste.

Current batteries suffer high costs, short cycling lifetimes, low energy density, etc. A new battery design is needed. Building cooperative interfaces that enable anode-free batteries is the solution.

As a result of the strong economic growth in many African countries, the continent has a growing demand for young professionals, particularly in mathematics, IT and engineering, in order to ensure rapid and stable economic, social and political development. Yet, only six per cent of post-secondary aged Africans are enrolled…

The nominating institution Curriki on the breakthrough: The challenge facing education worldwide is the lack of high quality easy to use tools for educators to create truly engaging digital learning experiences. For too long, the technologies required to build and publish Next Generation learning experiences have been out of reach…

Science support for political volunteers. Tags: Circular Economy, Climate change, Environment & Nature, Food & Agriculture, Science Communication, Science Policy, Social Cohesion, Trust in science.

To end poverty & joblessness through software development. Utilization of technology for development  TakenoLAB is an ICT Academy and Tech Hub, providing its communities with a wide range of technological platforms on which they can learn and practice software development. The introduction of online jobs is also allowing people to…

Andrea Fischer and colleagues present the first dating of glacier ice using less than 2 mL STP of argon from ∼5 kg of ice, finally opening the door for radioargon dating in glaciology. Alpine summit glaciers have a characteristic age range between 100 and 1,000 years. Reliable dating is the…

We have developed a novel therapeutic for SARS-CoV-2 that relies on nanobodies – antibody fragments from alpacas and llamas. Combining protein engineering, structural biology, and virology, we found that multi-component molecules binding the virus on two surfaces lead to robust neutralization of wildtype virus and newly emerging variants. Unlike most…

We create a domain-specific programming language, PVL, which aims to verify program implementations against their specifications via an internal verification engine embedded into PVL compiler. Tags: Engineering, Computer Science, Software Engineering, Safety-Critical Systems.

By telling stories of women affected by the Zika epidemic, Debora Diniz has shown how the lack of a gender perspective in health emergency response leads to growing gender-based violence, loss of livelihoods, excessive unpaid care work and adverse mental, sexual and reproductive health outcomes for women and girls. As…

I work on many projects that address digital science education, particularly working with overlooked communities. I work primarily in various classrooms around the world, designing, building, testing, and researching adaptive and interactive science pedagogies, particularly ones that contain a digital component. This had led to many innovations in digital science…

We aim at leveraging Computer Vision techniques to efficiently analyze the out-stream of fish from the sea. Empowered by this knowledge, we can devise optimal strategies for achieving sustainable seas. Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Environment & Nature, Food & Agriculture, Resilience, sustainability.

How Technological Entrepreneurship Saves Economies With Limited Natural Resources When Dan Shechtman became a full professor at Technion in 1986 and initiated a new class on technological entrepreneurship, the word “start up” – which became a mantra after the dot-com boom – was not that fashionable yet. Even today, entrepreneurship education…

The main objective of Genome Adventures was to sensitise and engage Batswana on genomics and biomedical research through the use of cartoons and capacity building workshops. The Genome Adventures creative team co-created the work with scientists, adolescents and scientists in CAfGEN to try to create content that would engage policy…

PRESENTED BY Siew Ng NOMINATED BY The Chinese University of Hong Kong Tags: Microbiome, Probiotics, Prebiotics, Personalized Medicine

Digital Platform of educational ludic challenges. Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Climate change, Covid-19, Digitalisation, Diversity, Education, Environment & Nature, Global Cooperation, Resilience, Science Communication, Social Cohesion.

Since the Berlin Wall has fallen, the World has made real progress in the fight against extreme poverty: the number of people living in extreme poverty has declined from 1.4 billion then to 800 million today. The number of children dying under the age of 5 every year has been…

Achieving easy, affordable, effective, and efficient access to mental health care services for everyone around the world. Tags: Covid-19, Mental Health.

Using silver and natural plant polyphenols (the molecules behind hard-to-remove wine stains), JJ Richardson creates antimicrobial coatings that stick to any surface and neutralize viruses, bacteria, and fungi. Richardson’s universally adherent antimicrobial coatings can be sprayed on by non-experts in the home or hospital, are so thin you can’t see…

In his talk, “Breaking the Wall of Sustainable Farming”, Thomas Rippel explained how manure – which is a rich natural fertilizer, but also produces large amounts of toxic gases – can be neutralised in an eco-friendly and highly efficient way. With a simple yet brilliant idea Thomas Rippel finds a…

How Evolutionary Biology Explains Creativity How many of our friends on Facebook or Twitter are actually posting their own texts and ideas rather than quoting someone else’s? But more importantly, what if we stopped innovating in the real world, becoming more followers than leaders, copiers rather than innovators? Mark Pagel…

According to Fabiyan Angikath, current methods of hydrogen production involve CO2 emissions and/or are expensive. He, therefore, suggests introducing molten metal reactor technology to produce sustainable H2 production.

Set the saponin extraction method, formulate the biofungicide product, evaluate its effectiveness against phytopathogen in different crops. Tags: Bio-Tech, Circular Economy, Environment & Nature, Food & Agriculture.

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious”, Albert Einstein said. “It is the source of true art and science.” In her project, the internationally renowned photographer Herlinde Koelbl places the main focus on this playfulness, the amazement which is driving every researcher: A formula, a philosophy, a…

The nominating institution Deakin University on the breakthrough: Macreadie and Blue Carbon Lab are taking urgent action to combat climate change. They use innovative nature-based solutions as long-term carbon storage to reduce atmospheric CO2. Mangroves, seagrass, and saltmarsh, collectively known as Blue Carbon ecosystems, are globally highly degraded, but offer…

Capitalizing on smart thermobimetal’s natural tendency to curl as the temperature rises, DORIS SUNG’s refreshing aesthetic skillfully disguises its true purpose: to use no energy to save energy in buildings. With goals to self-shade, self-ventilate, self-assemble or self-propel, Sung’s projects defy standard categorization. With a keen understanding of computation, biology,…

The nominating institution SCHOTT on the breakthrough: SCHOTT is the first company to mass produce ultra thin alumino-silicate glass, as required for foldable mobile display covers. Thickness below 0.1 mm allows for bending radii below 2 mm, after a so-called chemical toughening process. The glass is produced directly in the…

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.

Aerogels are a class of solid materials with outstanding properties, a consequence of their open porous 3D nanostructure. They demonstrate promising results for pollution filtering and lightweight vehicle insulation, as well as for advanced battery systems in sustainable mobility. With the support of simulation and digitization for reverse engineering, the…

A biologist by training, Vincent Widmer holds a master’s degree in Learning in Teaching Technologies as well as a Ph.D. in Educational Sciences from the University of Geneva, Switzerland, where he worked and conducted scientific research in collaborative learning. As co-founder of Beekee,Vincent brings his passion for pedagogy and emerging…

My project is about finding the protein aggregates as the pathophysiology of preeclampsia Tags: Health Science.

Mental Health: Do we Need a New Super Science? Falling Walls Circle Tables are lending the spotlight to world-leading scientists, science strategists and policy-makers from academia, business and politics discuss how we can apply science, research and innovation to get the world moving again. While stigma around mental health may…

Latent Being is groundbreaking audio-visual artwork that turns Kraftwerk Berlin into an ecosystem of synesthetic interactions by utilizing a cutting-edge deep learning algorithm, styleGAN. Anadol’s collaboration with the mind of a machine interweaves the urban, architectural, societal, and perceptual scales of experience, allowing the audience walk through a dynamic ocean…

Daniel Garavito’s dream is for all human beings to have access to the knowledge of humanity within reach. For this he created CallsToEducate, bringing education to all corners of the world through a simple call.

The nominating institution University of Cambridge on the breakthrough: An IoT-based system for continuous, remote, autonomous, and real-time ambulatory healthcare monitoring and recommendation system has been developed for nations with stressed healthcare resources. The AmbuSens system, which evolved into EpiOne, monitors patients in transit between rural healthcare units to specialty…

Aerosols are key elements of the atmosphere and the Earth system, influencing air quality, climate and human health in the Anthropocene. They scatter or absorb sunlight, serve as nuclei for clouds and precipitation, and adversely affect human health. In particular, human respiratory aerosols are involved in the transmission of SARS-CoV-2…

Miniaturizing engines and machines to sizes less than a few millimetres remains an unmet challenge because of the complexity of their design and their fundamental physics that does not favor down-sizing. Materials that respond like muscles by changing their shape or size on demand offer an alternative way to power…

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…

Quantum Computing arguably presents the biggest shift in computer science since its inception. After 25 years of fundamental theoretical and experimental research, the top leaders in the field worldwide have committed themselves to the development of quantum computers as a real technology, solving real computational problems. The panelists of this…

How Robotics and Digital Data Will Change the Future of Agriculture The history of agriculture is one of constant evolution and a fair share of ground-breaking revolutions. Domesticated animals, employed to do some of the back-breaking work formerly done by farmers themselves, were replaced by tractors about a hundred years…

Two states of matter “solid” and “fluid”, which are mutually exclusive in the classical world, can exist simultaneously in the quantum world. The supersolid was created by dysprosium atoms that behave like tiny magnets and that were cooled down to near absolute zero (-273° Celsius). To generate a supersolid, the…

The nominating institution CNRC on the project: Shen offers a robust living cell platform that is widely accepted by regulatory authorities for manufacturing human vaccines. It has been used as a technology platform for development, and has potential for high-yield manufacturing of established vaccines or novel vaccines for emerging diseases,…

“Fermenting Futures” explores the significance of yeast biotechnology from a cultural, ethical and aesthetic perspective, engaging audiences in the history and future of this under-recognised field and its potential to offer environmental solutions. The art installation explores and physically contains a CRISPR modified Pichia pastoris yeast that is simultaneously able…

Can Cell-Based Interceptive Medicine Revolutionise Healthcare? Falling Walls Circle Tables are lending the spotlight to world-leading scientists, science strategists and policy-makers from academia, business and politics discuss how we can apply science, research and innovation to get the world moving again. Many diseases – from cancer to heart disease –…

The 10+10+30 radio program is a serial radio drama on childhood vaccination designed with and for communities in Jimma. The program is moderated by healthcare workers who are trained as radio panelists and invited to answer the audience’s questions during 30 minutes. Each 10-minute episode is developed with key audiences…