The nominating institution Hans Knöll Institute on the breakthrough: The dramatic rise of multidrug resistant infections requires global R&D efforts. This is not only a scientific, but a global socioeconomic challenge. Since antibiotics development is not lucrative, publicly funded programs are increasingly important. Kloß’s group is developing a new antibiotic…

HOW IMMUNISATION AND MALARIA CONTROL ARE SAVING SENEGAL’S NEW GENERATIONS According to The Economist, child mortality in Senegal has dropped fourty percent in just five years from 2005 to 2010, one of fastest reductions the world has ever witnessed. The country had falls of more than eight percent a year…

How Video Games Can Improve Brain Functioning and Treat Mental Illnesses “Do you suffer from schizophrenia? Do you hear distressing voices? There’s an app for that.” The claim of the latest “web-tutor” might sound like a scam, but it actually introduces us to an entirely new approach in treating mental…

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…

The nominating institute EPFL on the breakthrough: Reward-based learning underlies important aspects of human and animal behavior, and recent advances reveal detailed understanding of the underlying neuronal mechanisms in mice. Precise optical and electrophysiological measurements, optogenetic perturbations and computational analyses uncover fundamental mechanisms of brain function during simple forms of…

The nominating institute Technische Universität Braunschweig on the project: Vaccines cannot cure COVID-19. We need an additional medication to cure the infected, and protect the risk populations that are expected to respond to vaccination with success rates far below 100%. This can be achieved by using human antibodies, exactly the…

The nominating institute German Center for Research and Innovation in São Paulo on the breakthrough: With Nanox, Simões develops and markets nanostructured inorganic composite antimicrobial materials. He has already proven the efficiency of two products against COVID-19. The US-patented Ag+Fresh was the first to have this property certified, according to…

HOW PSYCHOPHYSICS AND NEUROPHYSIOLOGY CAN IMPROVE OUR FOOD CHOICES If we could trust flavour as a guide to a healthy diet, the world would be a happier place, and probably without the endless fight between Atkins and Zone diet fans. Unfortunately things aren’t that easy. Our taste for food depends…

HOW A REACTIVE SYSTEMS APPROACH MAY LEAD TO FULL DYNAMIC MODELS OF MULTICELLULAR ORGANISMS One-day experiments on living beings will be, to a large extent, substi-tuted by interactive simulations on computers. A decade ago, computer scientist David Harel, winner of the Israel Prize, the ACM Software System Award, the Emet…

How Neuroimmunology Develops New Strategies Against Brain Ageing and Degeneration Michal Schwartz’ studies revolutionized the current understanding of degenerative conditions of the central nervous system. Her theory broke the long-held dogma that immune cell entry to the brain should be completely blocked by a cellular wall, and shattered the understanding…

Conventional accelerators require multiple football fields in length to reach very high particle energies (multi-billion eV). Laser-powered, plasma-based accelerators, where electrons surf on waves, can do this in just a few 10’s of cm. This plasma technology is at the brink of offering a profoundly different way in which we…

How Gravitational Waves Let Us Hear the Sound of Space For centuries we’ve only possessed one sense to explore space: our eyes. Everything we know about the universe is based on things we observed gazing at the stars. Using powerful telescopes and ever-more sophisticated technology, we have managed to map…

While nature builds all her organic materials from CO₂, the stability and inertness of the CO₂ molecule prevents its use in chemical technology. The team of Leitner searches for catalysts as molecular tools to break through this wall. Together with the company Covestro, they developed a catalytic process to incorporate…

Ten years ago, Professor Arno Rauschenbeutel was the first to couple laser-trapped atoms with light in glass fibers that are 100 times thinner than a human hair. This achievement was a door opener for the field on quantum nanophotonics. There, one studies the interaction of atoms, molecules, or artificial atoms…

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…

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…

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 Next European Particle Accelerator – Does CERN Need Another Supercollider? 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. Europe is currently investigating…

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,…

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…

We are developing an Artificial-intelligence based system and a mobile app that lead malaria elimination campaigns. We are one of the top-10 teams in the IBM Watson XPRIZE AI For Good competition, 2021.   Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Digital Health, Public Health.

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

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.

We do deep research in examining these creatures and utilizing them for our behalf, we treated several patients who suffered from antibiotic resistant infections using phages, many of them successfully. Tags: Bio-Tech, Med-Tech, Science Policy, Microbiology, Antibiotic Resistance.

A scalable protein-protein interaction screen helps unraveling the pathogenesis for disease mutations e.g. GLUT1 deficiency syndrome, thereby providing a possible mechanism for a range of other cases.

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

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.

Rushabh Chheda won third place at the Falling Walls Lab Finale 2019 with his pitch on creating affordable housing while simultaneously reducing waste plastic. Rushabh developed a method to create interlocking building blocks from recycled local waste plastic, a process that empowers local communities worldwide to build their own houses,…

In my project, we work on the possibility of encoding information in OAM modes and multiplex these modes in optical fiber for transmission. Tags: Science Communication.

I saw that people were being left behind by genomics, I left academia to used lessons from the innovation space to change this. To do this our team is building a doctor/patient focused genome browser.

haMSter offers patients an opportunity to report underrepresented symptoms in MS that would normally go unaddressed. It is a convenient tool to use for quality of life research.   Tags: Digital Health, Digitalisation, Med-Tech, Mobile Health, Science Communication.

Our app encourages students to drive their own learning experience via interaction with a 3D anatomical model in augmented reality. Whilst a number of anatomy applications use augmented reality, none concentrate on ocular anatomy in detail. The breakthrough is our integration of a Learn mode coupled with an adaptive Assess…

UTAS’s mission is “A place where we do things for Tasmania and from Tasmania”. Its strategy and implementation are geared to improve life for Tasmanians in six areas: Educational Attainment, Health, Economic Performance, Social Inclusion, Cultural Participation, and Environmental Sustainability. It deploys outcome indicators to measure and manage progress in…

How fast-charging batteries work and why they matter In order for the European Union to achieve its goal of zero net emissions by 2050, the speed at which devices can be charged needs to increase significantly. Clare Grey, Professor of Chemistry at Cambridge University, sees her work as an important…

Every weekend two registered members are selected to engage each other in Africa’s first ever virtual quiz tagged “SCIENCE BATTLE OF BRAINS ” in a face to face encounter on zoom video conferencing application (temporarily due to Covid 19 lockdown).Other members from all across Africa also connect from their homes…

Impact of COVID-19: How has the pandemic affected how we do 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. The COVID-19 pandemic…

The project is included within the regeneration program of the entire Central Park of Mazatlán. The project will offer the complete experience of the marine ecosystems of the Sea of ​​Cortez, as well as the terrestrial ones of its shores. Around and inside the building nature lives alive and growing,…

The idea behind our series of biodiversity-themed art competitions is simple: we ask kids & teens to make an artwork showcasing their local biodiversity. Artworks (of any kind – paintings, sculptures, and more!) can depict a single animal or plant, or even feature an entire landscape. In each location, a…

Mobilising the power of innovation to address societal and environmental challenges. The Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium (TIPC) was established in 2017 as a five-year global knowledge platform, coordinated by the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex, the Centre for Global Challenges at Utrecht University, and Ingenio in…

Students at schools for the deaf design their own sound experiences through Ontenna programming Ontenna is a user interface that can be attached to the hair, earlobe or neck to feel the characteristics of sound through vibration and light. As of June 2021, Ontenna has been installed in more than…