Falling Walls Falling Walls Science Summit 2022

Using computational methods, Jiao Jiao Li optimises the conditions for growing stem cells. The cells respond to environmental changes and output the most effective biomolecules for treating a specific disease.

Information is to society as air is to a living organism. We have come a long way to embrace nature protection, conservation, and resource management in our pursuit of environmental quality. A similar comprehensive framework to ensure the quality of our information environment is however missing. My work builds on…

How Advocacy and Activism Pave the Way for Rights and Dignity After more than 50 years of activity, Amnesty International does not slow down its commitment to promoting freedom and justice worldwide. It recently made headlines with reports on the human rights violations committed by Turkish authorities during the Gezi…

PRESENTED BY Andreas Schmidt NOMINATED BY National University of Singapore Tags: Cancer, Proteogenomics, Healthcare, Precision Medicine, Single Cell Analysis

The Idea of this project came from famous Brain-Ring intelligence game where two groups are competing with push-buttons for quick answering to the questions from different spheres. We decided to involve university students in the organizing of the game, assembled with them the buttons and control system, wrote down logical…

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…

Tags: Circular Economy, Climate change, Cultural Memory, Education, New Work, Social Cohesion, Play

The nominating institution National University of Singapore on the breakthrough: Static charge is ubiquitous, and causes a lot of problems. It reduces the efficiency of manufacturing processes, damages equipment, causes explosions, and allows particles to stick onto surfaces easily (e.g., dust on screens). As such, it influences almost all types…

In our current moment our society prioritizes the material over the numinous. While generates progress in technology, it is apparent to most that something important in the way we relate to one another has been lost, the effects of which are felt across countries and institutions pushing us to a…

I study the development of scientific knowledge–particularly in the earth and environmental sciences–as well as the political, social, and cultural obstacles to the development and dissemination of scientific knowledge. I am interested in both how knowledge is produced and how ignorance is sustained. It’s a “core idea” because it we…

The nominating institution SLAC Stanford on the breakthrough: The advent of the high-temperature superconducting materials in 1986 has motivated the enduring search for novel systems that one day may carry lossless electricity at room temperature. Using a novel Jenga building block approach, we have discovered a superconducting nickel oxide. This…

The nominating institution Weizmann Institute of Science on the breakthrough: ALS is an incurable and fatal disease. A recent landmark study has identified a bioactive gut microbiome commensal and secreted product (nicotinamide) as disease modifying in ALS-prone mice. Importantly, human patients featured similar microbial and CNS metabolite alterations. This work provides…

“Tianjic” is the the world’s first brain-inspired hybrid computing chip that bridges computer-science-oriented and neuroscience-oriented approaches. It not only accommodates computer-science-oriented machine learning algorithms and neuroscience-oriented models, but also supports cross computing paradigm modelling. With one chip, a bicycle performs real-time object detection, tracking, voice recognition, obstacle avoidance, auto balance…

The nominating institution University of Edinburgh on the breakthrough: New X-ray Free-Electron Lasers allow us to track the motion of atoms and capture the rearrangement of electrons as molecules absorb light or undergo chemical reactions. This powerful imaging technique creates sharp and detailed movies that unveil how molecular machines function,…

BrainReach is an outreach programme that provides free bilingual neuroscience education to students in underserved neighborhoods in Montreal and remote indigenous communities of Quebec. Volunteers visit the same classroom every month to deliver interactive workshops. The mission of BrainReach is to educate school students on how their brains function, reduce…

Our group periodically visits those schools of Armenia that are far from Yerevan and these schools do not have a physics laboratory so that children can do different experiments and understand the lessons well. In our practice, there was such a case that one student, seeing us and our experiments,…

Distance Learning: How low-tech solutions help to make education accessible for everyone Education is key for economic advancement as well as social stability. However, providing quality education is especially challenging in countries that lack infrastructure, learning materials and trained teachers. UNESCO estimates that 617 million school-age children around the world…

A gender equality and menstruation normalisation project. A very simple solution to change the interactions in the public toilet: a very common and public place designated to very private activities. Tags: Discrimination, Diversity, Future /green cities, Gender, Social Cohesion, Sustainability & Gender Equality.

The convergence of cell biology and genetic engineering is creating fundamental new ways to impact disease. Capitalizing on these technological breakthroughs, BlueRock are advancing novel cell+gene platform to develop, manufacture, and deliver an entirely new generation of authentic and engineered cell therapies, across neurology, cardiology and immunology. Lead program is…

Common lecture recording techniques include voiceover and picture-in-picture. These approaches separate the lecturer from the content. The live composite video lecture technique avoids that by layering slide content directly over the video in real-time. This allows the lecturer to monitor slide content and interact with it as if it were…

PRESENTED BY Varinder Singh NOMINATED BY Chitkara University  

The nominating institution Einstein Center for Neurosciences Berlin on the breakthrough: Open Innovation (OI) offers a different way of doing research to address urgent global challenges. We developed an unique training strategy that empowers early-stage researchers to apply OI concepts into their projects. To embed our training into Berlin’s neuroscience…

An environmentally friendly chemical compound used as a high-quality shield in X-ray attenuation. The chemical compound is characterized by its flexibility and ease of formation. Tags: Bio-Tech, Circular Economy, Digital Health, Engineering, Environment & Nature, Future /green cities, New Work, Trust in science.

Stem4Her offers STEM training to young schoolgirls and encourages them to use the skills they have learned to tackle issues in society. Stem4Her empowers schoolgirls in rural and suburban communities with a focus on hands-on training sessions and practical knowledge. Through a documentary series, the project also aims to inspire…

Peter Baum is a professor of physics at the University of Konstanz, Germany. His current research in Konstanz focuses on the interaction of light and matter at ultimately small dimensions of space and time, using electron pulses under light-cycle control. Atoms and electrons are the two central constituents of all…

Prof. Dr. med. Tobias Moser is a neuroscientist and otolaryngologist at the Göttingen Campus in Germany. He heads the Institute for Auditory Neuroscience at the University Medical Center Göttingen and leads research groups at the German Primate Center and the Max-Planck-Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences. His main areas of research are…

This interdisciplinary project links social neuroscience, cognitive psychology, robotics, AI and philosophy with potential for high societal impact. The project examines how the human brain processes social signals exhibited by artificial agents, such as humanoid robots, in order to improve robot design for human-robot interaction in general, and their acceptance…

In order to grasp the future of cities, one has to look towards Africa and Asia. While the African continent is rapidly urbanising – by 2036 more than half of the African population will live in cities – the rising number of city dwellers live under extremely unequal conditions. By…

Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Citizen Science, Digitalisation, Diversity, Education, Engineering, Environment & Nature, Global Cooperation, Open Access, Quantum Technologies, Resilience, Robotic, Science Communication, Science Diplomacy, Science, Policy, Social Cohesion, Space & the Universe, Trust in science.

Our pioneering simulations of supermassive black hole binaries have linked the theory of galaxy formation with the emerging field of gravitational waves. By probing the physics at scales less than a light year inside colliding galaxies, we have shown that black holes can merge much faster than previously thought, we…

Viewing the Invisible is a multimedia project exploring common methodology between artists and scientists. Artists painted portraits of science influencers from education, politics, media, policy, academia and industry, and the process was filmed, as painter and subject discussed their ways of working. We hold exhibitions of the portraits, films and…

Her scholarship changes the landscape of current thinking about what it means to be a “state” and to accept the role of “citizen.” It considers a set of institutional arrangements that not only embody an explicit set of values (the moral part) but also ensure, first, democratic practices that work…

PRESENTED BY Wei Wu NOMINATED BY German Aerospace Center Tags: Sustainability, Solar Power, Storing Heat

David Stark researches networks of cognition in markets and teams. At Falling Walls, he was taking about about the idea of an algorithmic society, power asymmetries on the organizational level, and the relationship between platform providers and their customers.

C-DELTA is a breakthrough in creating a platform for large scale training on digital education for students and teachers around the world for free. It is about how to make digital learning more efficient for individuals and the society by recognising digital identity and footprints online, creating and sharing digital…

Using the XFEL at SLAC, we are constructing a compact X-ray laser oscillator that will open exciting new research opportunities in quantum optics, materials science, and ultra-precision metrology. Tags: Energy, Quantum Technologies.

PRESENTED BY Olav Birlem NOMINATED BY Technical University of Darmstadt Tags: Assembly Technology, Metallic Velcro, Nano Wires, Metallic Touch Fastener

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…

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.

The VR app makes you see what normally is invisible: Various encounters and situations of employees coming from migration or prejudiced backgrounds experience every day. The VR user encounters these people face-to-face, allowing for an immediate experience of their stories. The project is a result of an interdisciplinary team: Esther…

Innovating Industry and Research Is it possible to demonstrate the value of diversity in ways that are not financial? Where is the future of industry and research heading? Alison Kennedy of the Science and Technology Facilities Council in the UK and Miriam van Straelen, partner at Roland Berger, join Ruth…

The nominating institution DWIH SAO PAULO on the breakthrough: The German language is known for long words with many consonants. This makes many learners consider German an impossible language to learn let alone pronounce. How can we use our mobile phone to overcome the challenges of learning German? Through the…

FUTURE VOICES is a pioneering constellation of works at the intersection of voice, technology and performance. Powered by the unprecedented need for new ways of connection in our society, it highlights the fundamental role of human voice: not only as a tool for communication, but also for our connection with…

Rachel Kropa is Managing Director of Nonprofit and Science at Robert Downey Jr’s FootPrint Coalition, a coalition of investors, donors, and storytellers committed to scaling technologies to restore the planet. FootPrint Coalition’s Science Engine is an initiative that enables scientists to share and crowdfund their research on climate and biodiversity crises by…

It is a totally novel and proprietary method of visualization, using specifically created paper coatings and manipulating the animals in such a way that their thought process, strategy and corresponding movements are documented on the paper, thereby also capturing time in a stand-still picture of artistic quality. The artistic contribution…

Manufacture of subcutaneous implant made with Polytetrafluoroethylene, tolerated by human body, releasing continuously the required hypotensive substance at a flow equal to the recommended daily dose. Tag: Med-Tech.

Since 2017 we have 3 main science engagement projects: 1- Hands-on robotics and coding training program where we train public school students on how to build a robot as well how to code and implement project using design thinking 2- Skills development bootcamp, using science kits as well robotics kits,…

A fast and smart technology to identify potential virus outbreaks and hotspots, to early detect asymptomatic carriers, and to establish a real time database with live monitoring of viral load in air. Tags: Bio-Tech, Covid-19.

Deep ocean extreme environments – sites of immense beauty, wonder and intrigue – harbor unique and unimagined microorganisms that thrive at radically different pressure, temperature, salinity, and pH regimes compared to those on land or in the surface ocean. State-of-the-art genomic and computational approaches will guide targeted discovery of unique…

Challenge-Based Learning: The project inspires young people to step out of classroom and explore their purpose in the world. Wandering Challenge designs for 3 students to form a team, challenge themselves to complete 30 missions within 3 weeks. The challenge encourages them to step out of school, make the city…