As in countless other areas, the diversity, frequency, and scale of human activity are having devastating effects on our oceans and their ecosystem. Whilst overfishing, pollution, and climate change are severely damaging to coral reefs around the world, we remain largely ignorant of – or blind to – the importance…

The nominating institution TUM on the project: Novel anti-bacterial drugs are needed to treat multiresistant pathogens. Our research focuses on expanding the scope via compounds with novel mechanisms of action. A major breakthrough represents the discovery of a new type of antibiotic overcoming several previous limitations. The molecule addresses unprecedented…

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…

The key to understanding the interplay between cancer and the immune system is quantifying the spatial biology and co-expression patterns of critical cell types. We used lessons from astronomy (Sloan Digital Sky Survey) to efficiently map tumor pathology tissues with high-fidelity, single-cell resolution using multispectral microscopy. The resultant AstroPath platform…

How Responsive Nanomaterials Take Medicine to the Next Level Self-destruction mechanisms are not only a frequent feature of action movies, they are also the next big thing in nanomedicine. Think of tiny capsules that overcome complex barriers of the body and eventually dissolve, releasing substances to specific places – and…

The nominating institution Oak Ridge National Laboratory on the project: Tuskan’s groundbreaking plant genomics research is driving creation of non-food super crops that store carbon and grow on marginal lands with less water, nutrients and pesticides. The 250-scientist DOE Center for Bioenergy Innovation he leads at Oak Ridge National Laboratory…

A large part of our life remains a mystery. We spend roughly a third of our life with our eyes closed, resting, regenerating, and dreaming. Sleep is universal and common to humans and all animals, so one would imagine it to be one of the best-researched subjects in history. This…

The negative effects of our digital habits, our propensity to skim-read texts and our lack of mental focus have been widely reported. However, the real impact on our reading abilities, which extends to the impairment of crucial structures in the functioning of our brain, has consequences far greater than we…

The nominating institution Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research on the breakthrough: In February, SORMAS was extended by a module for the control of COVID-19. Since then, it supports international health authorities in risk assessment and disease control. SORMAS is already used in Ghana and Nigeria, and the governments of 8…

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 basic motivation for the project was the curiosity of how the environment looked like near the South Pole during the last time the planet underwent extreme greenhouse climate conditions ~90 million years ago. Can we define extreme potencies of atmospheric carbon dioxide contents but also underline how significant the…

How Fluorescence Microscopy Can Now Provide Images on The Nanoscale „What if we could use a microscope to look at living cells and be able to see not only their shapes, but every single detail inside of them – down to the individual molecules?“ Some 25 years ago, scientists would…

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…

By developing high-performance non-classical light sources and multi-photon interference, Jian-Wei Pan and his colleague Chao-Yang Lu together with their team have implemented boson sampling with up to 76 photons out of a 100-mode interferometer, which yields a Hilbert state space dimension of 10^30 and a rate that is 10^14 faster…

Quantum Computers in the NISQ Era – Competition or Cooperation? 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. Quantum Computers have made headlines,…

What the Discovery of the Higgs Boson Tells us About Physics, Mankind and the Universe Rolf-Dieter Heuer, the director of the most prominent and complex scientific experiment in history, is back at Falling Walls after his first talk in 2009 to show us which walls the 27-kilometer-long particle accelerator Large…

Astrophysics: How space exploration can answer one of the most pressing questions of all time There is no planet in our solar system quite as fascinating as Mars. For centuries, the red planet has fascinated scientists and the public alike, ultimately leading to one question: Has there ever been life…

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…

Quantum theory is one of the two revolutions in modern day physics. However, its underlying root is still very much a mystery. Here we revisit the Stern-Gerlach Experiment, a paradigm of quantum theory, and by using modern technology have managed to shed new light on this fundamental spin quantization experiment.…

Günther Hasinger is one of the leading experts in astrophysical deep X-ray surveys and is currently focusing on the formation of the earliest black holes. He was speaking about planetary exploration, especially the missions that ESA are doing with NASA and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency).

By capitalizing on low-cost local wool produced by herders, Oyungerel Munkhbat is able to produce affordable air purification filters as efficient as the HEPA filter, preventing air pollution-related diseases.

He is an antibiotics researcher who not only promises new antibiotics, but also to make existing antibiotics more efficient. The potential should be peer reviewed. Not particularly novel in its methods, all the big ones use ‘AI’ to find new molecules. Standard problems of antimicrobiotical research apply to his team…

To remove heavy metals from produced wastewater, Praise Eromosele proposes using sawdust, a natural adsorbent from wood factories, in place of the more expensive methods, ultimately creating a sawdust “cycle”.

Transformation of palm fiber into valuable cellulose and its further chemically modification are our effort to develop highly-effective and powerful adsorbent for removal dyes in aqueous media.   Tags: Engineering, Environment & Nature, Ocean Pollution.

Bring together and develops the best of two technologies in conjunction- topologically stable nano-skyrmions and fast dynamics of ferrimagnetic materials, thereby breaking out of the trilemma wall. Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Digital Health, Digitalisation, Energy, Engineering, Quantum Technologies, Information/Data storage and processing.

The research focuses on phenomenal optical properties of new emerging group IV-V two dimensional materials for advanced high-speed optoelectronic and telecommunication applications. Tags: Optical Communication (Photonics & Optoelectronics).

To develop synthesis of new skeletally diverse compounds based on 1,4-benzothiazine, synthesize libraries of new compounds and screen for anti-TB activity to identify new classes of anti-TB compounds. Tags: Covid-19, Med-Tech, New materials.

Cutting-edge particle accelerator and quantum computational simulations to unveil each step of an enzyme reaction to guide an efficient design of new functions for sustainable industrial applications.

I’m investigating the impact of lifestyle on cancer risk. Looking at smoking cessation and dietary changes, I monitor personalised cancer risk reduction over time in 120 women using DNA methylation.

Interdisciplinary approach to break the wall of pesticide usage. Benefit for environment, farmers, and society since significantly less pesticides have to be used for food production.   Tags: Bio-Tech, Environment & Nature, Food & Agriculture, Green Tech.

The nominating institution University of Helsinki on the breakthrough: Ovaskainen and Abrego have developed a Hierarchical Modelling of Species Communities (HMSC) framework, which revolutionizes how data on ecological communities is analysed and interpreted. HMSC allows data integration on species abundances, environmental covariates, species traits, phylogenetic relationships, and the spatio-temporal context. …

Markus Rex and Stefanie Arndt have respectively led and participated in the MOSAiC expedition. Between 2019 and 2020 the German icebreaker Polarstern spent a year drifting through the Arctic Ocean trapped in ice. The goal was to improve the understanding of the full seasonal cycle of processes and interactions in…

This Winners Session features the Top 10 breakthroughs in the Social Sciences and Humanities category. Learn about societal philosophy and other philosophical approaches to understand our current society: from living in a society of singularities to providing a new ethical and philosophical framework for the 21st century, from a cultural…

PRESENTED BY Martin Bothe NOMINATED BY Humboldt Universität zu Berlin Tags: Surgical Gloves, Examination Gloves, Protection, Surgery, Material Science, Healthcare Workers, Medical Device

Paradigm is inspired by ideas of science and is a metaphor for potential; the potential to grow, take risks, and be bold and brave. These are all qualities which are necessary for scientific progress and reflect the ambition and intention of the Crick Institute. I chose weathered steel as the…

Huiming Bu was talking about humanity’s attempts to keep up with and surpass Moore’s law. In IBM’s case, that entails decreasing the size of chips while increasing their performance and energy consumption. Stacking the chips on a three dimensional plane will improve their efficiency and power the next generations of…

How Astronomy Explores the Past, Present and Future of the Universe The universe is a mysterious place – we know it is some 13.8 billion years old with the part we can observe being about 90 billion light years in diameter, which means that the most distant edges we can…

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

The nominating institute Botswana Innovation Hub on the breakthrough: Mashaba’s consortium mobilises communities to identify challenges and follow a design innovation framework that quickly creates scalable solutions. The model follows a social entrepreneurship route, and establishes sustainable businesses in the communities — thus enhancing their livelihoods. It is being rolled…

Working at the intersection of technology, art and design, Jiabao Li creates new ways for humans to perceive the world. “TransVision” questions the habitual ways in which we interpret the visual world intervened by digital media through three perceptual machines. In “Glacier’s Lament”, she collaborated with glaciologists to turn esoteric…