Which wall will your research break?
Pitch your innovative idea in just 3 minutes, showcasing a breakthrough that creates a positive impact on science and society.
The aim of the Falling Walls Lab is to foster scientific and entrepreneurial innovation, and to promote the cross-discipline exchanges between outstanding, emerging scholars and professionals. These presentations will allow researchers to showcase their discoveries – creating a positive impact on science and society in front of both their peers, and a distinguished jury from academia and business. The MSCA Falling Walls Lab will gather 20 MSCA fellows from across a huge array of scientific disciplines, with each fellow given the opportunity to pitch their research topic, innovative project or idea.
Adriana González is a postdoctoral researcher, PROBIST fellow at ICFO. She has been selected for presenting her pitch at the Falling Walls Lab, being the only representantive of an Spanish Centre. Her pitch is entitled Breaking the Wall of Prosthetic Intercellular Communication and she introduces herself this way:
I consider myself as a very creative, motivated, hardworking and passionate about science. My scientific interests are focused on the cellular and molecular mechanisms of neurodegenerative disorders and the influence of the environment on the physiological processes and its consequences on the development of diseases. After finishing my Biology degree in Venezuela, I was prompted to pursue a Master study in Germany in Molecular Cell Biology and Neurobiology and later continue my scientific career as a PhD student at the University of Kiel. Currently, at the Institute of Photonic Science, I am working on developing alternative imaging tools via the use of bioluminescence proteins and generate prosthetic pathways to circumvent miscommunication events observed in various diseases.
This year, due to the unprecedented events surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic, the Falling Walls Conference is being reimagined Falling Walls Remote. Our annual November event will shift from a series of meetings and one conference with a limited number of speakers and topics to a global showcase that gathers, discusses, and celebrates a much broader set of breakthroughs in science and society – the Falling Walls Breakthroughs of the Year! The winners of this year’s regional Falling Walls Labs, hosted by academic institutions to showcase the quality, diversity, and passion of their region’s most innovative minds, will compete against each other to become the Breakthrough Winner in the Emerging Talents category. In a year filled with extraordinary circumstances that demand a new level of flexibility from all of us, we look forward to setting the stage for the post-corona agenda with a truly global experience. The international network of Falling Walls Labs includes renowned academic institutions from over 60 countries. Stanford University, the ETH Zurich, the University of Tokyo, and the University of São Paulo are only a few of the universities that have recently participated in the Falling Walls Lab programme.
The Falling Walls Lab is organised by the Falling Walls Foundation and generously funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the Berlin-Senate, Bayer Foundations, Google, Huawei, and Sartorius. It is supported by the Federal Foreign Office of Germany and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).
More information here