Kevin Esvelt

HOW BIOLOGY INSPIRES NANOMECHANICS From the elasticity of blood vessels to the self-healing properties of bones, the strength of nacre, the smart adhesion of gecko feet, the self-cleaning quality of the lotus leaf and the resistance of the spiderweb, biology offers endless inspiration to nanomechanics, some of which might also…

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.

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…

Only 5-10% of blind people have access to education as their education is very expensive and only limited resources are available. The Digital Braille Display System (Braille tablet) can replicate any text, graphical diagram or map to standard Braille, and provides unlimited content available (online & offline) at low cost.

The nominating institution EPFL on the breakthrough: Safe and affordable housing and infrastructure are key to sustainable global development and rely on construction materials such as cement. Cement production is responsible for ~8% of global CO2 emission. Limestone calcined clay cement (LC3) allows up to 50% reduction of CO2 emission…

José Manuel Rojas Díaz is working on addressing the high mortality rate of cervical cancer in Mexican women by developing a novel technology called BiKE (bispecific killer cell engager). This technology is designed to target a specific tumour marker, recruiting and stimulating immune cells (NK cells) to enhance the antitumour…

Tanja Dragun is working on preventing the progression of prediabetes to diabetes by proposing an early intervention education model for prediabetic patients. The programme focuses on providing practical information, particularly on nutrition and food glycaemic response, to positively impact metabolic health and investigate the effect of education on key metabolic…

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…

Despite outperforming boys in science subjects up until grade 8, less than 10% of Pakistani engineering graduates are women. We believe societal pressures and stereotypical fear of math and science inhibits inclination to STEM education and consequent STEM careers for many young girls in Pakistan and globally. Games built around…

The nominating institution Heidelberg Univerity on the breakthrough: The second catalogue of Gaia has let to a revolution on astronomy. Gaia’s astrometric measurements with microarcsecond accuracies, supplemented by high-precision photometry has changed our understanding of the evolution of our Milky Way. Practically all fields of astronomy have profited from the…