Iyad Rahwan

A collaboration with psychologist Professor Richard Wiseman (University of Hertfordshire) that aimed to create a new type of magic-based science engagement video. The story of the Apollo Moon landings was illustrated with visual sleight-of-hand magic performed with specially printed playing cards. The video attracted over a hundred thousand views on…

According to Sarah Martell, hydrogen is a promising clean fuel source to replace fossil fuels. Although hydrogen fuel is considered clean and sustainable, common production methods are unsustainable and emit CO2. Her solution is to synthesize a material called porous silicon nanoparticles derived from abundant starting materials. By simply adding…

The nominating institute Indonesian Research Institute for Biotechnology and Bioindustry on the breakthrough: Today, molecular biology is not always related to transgenesis-based genetic engineering. Genome editing techniques such as CRISPR-Cas9 may revolutionize classic genetic engineering techniques. More than 14,000 international research papers have been published since 2012, and this number…

Thousands of students across Canada developed STEM projects this year, but most regional science fairs in March/April and the 2020 Canada-Wide Science Fair in May were cancelled. On May 4, YSC launched an online fair to encourage grade 7-12 students to share their projects and fuel their journey of discovery…

Hydrogen is the most abundant chemical substance in the universe. In this regard it is almost the exact opposite of fossil fuels, which are incredibly rare and hard to extract. So wouldn’t it be great if we could swap fossil fuels for renewable sources such as hydrogen? This Falling Walls…

Colorectal cancer is one of the most frequent cancers globally. A large proportion of people have modifiable risk factors, such as weight and diet. Coffee is the main source of chlorogenic acid, the most abundant polyphenol in natural products. Hernán Villota argues that these polyphenolic compounds could have a preventive…

In this Falling Walls Breakthrough Conversation, digital participants had the chance to engage in a live conversation with Shankar Balasubramanian. He talked about his role as Herchel Smith Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, his pioneering work on genome sequencing and the practical implications of his research.…

The nominating institution University of Innsbruck on the breakthrough: AQT is building upon 2 decades of European quantum research to now turn this know-how into a commercially successful company. Within one year of its first funding round AQT has managed to realize a first European quantum computer demonstrator, implemented cloud-access…

To overcome the inconvenience of finding lost items on campus, Marianne Chang proposes the use of a lost and found app to geotag the found items. Simple, convenient, and smart!

Tigran Ambartsumov is developing technology for intensifying the process of germinating seeds of agricultural crops, increasing the yield of crops and minimizing yield loss during drought years.