Philippe Ganz

The nominating institution DAAD on the breakthrough: Treating your vagus nerve can help to break walls between people. It controls how our heart is beating, and is responsible for many phenomena ensuring a positive social functioning. Laborde started his research career because of the headbutt of Zidane in 2006, willing…

A key driver for all scientific research is humanity’s natural instinct for exploration. We are driven to go where no one has gone before, discover what no one has found, and study what has never been seen. Scientists follow this exploratory instinct in all kinds of directions, whether it’s space,…

Founded in 2016, Plastic Odyssey is a floating laboratory/recycling centre powered entirely by plastics. Their three-year mission will deliver and support low tech solutions in communities across three continents.

In the 1930s, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed a “New Deal” policy to overcome the Great Depression. Less than 100 years later, the world is facing an even more global challenge: the climate crisis. In this Falling Walls Plenary Table, our international panelists ask whether this requires an equally…

In this Falling Walls Breakthrough Conversation, digital participants had the chance to engage in a live conversation with Rachel Kropa, Falling Walls Breakthrough of the Year 2022 in the category of Science and Innovation Management. She talked about her role as co-founder and Managing Director of Nonprofit & Science at…

With senseBox one can build, create and easily code stationary or mobile devices equipped with sensors for environmental phenomena like temperature, air quality or light pollution. The devices are connected to the internet and submit the measurements to the IoT-platform openSenseMap. The project is a breakthrough because it empowers children,…

The world has clear goals on reducing CO2 emissions to limit catastrophic climate change. But society needs chemicals – fuels, fertilizers, precursors for plastics and pharmaceuticals – where do these come from if we must reduce and eventual stop fossil fuel use? With easy availability of low-cost renewable electricity comes…

A Report from COP 27. The Conference of Parties (COP) is the supreme decision-making forum of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), bringing signatory governments together once a year to discuss and agree on how to jointly address climate change and its impacts. In November 2022, the…

Together with the architect Prof. Sven Pfeiffer (University of the Arts Berlin), the microbiologue Prof. Vera Meyer researches on alternatives for sustainable and climate-neutral construction material. Within their research they want find the best material and new ways of designing and constructing buildings with fungi. This groundbreaking research enables new…

What are the ways in which we can think the world from categories derived from particular spaces and lifeworlds, rather than working with categories seen as universal? Concepts such as modernization, westernization which were current in the period of the Cold War, with the implicit telos of Europe, have been…