The Falling Walls Foundation announced its shortlist in categories Science Engagement (Falling Walls Engage) and Science Start-Ups (Falling Walls Venture).
Shortlisted participants will pitch their ideas live during the Falling Walls Science Summit 2021.
One winner from each category will return to the stage on 9 November, the anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, for the prestigious “Science Breakthrough of the Year”.
STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) skill-budling among underrepresented and marginalized communities and inclusive education were central to the winning projects in the Falling Walls Engage category.
The shortlisted Falling Walls Venture start-ups presented solutions in digital health and disease diagnostics, novel sustainability practices, industrial-scale quantum computing, innovative analytics software and telecommunication and 3D printing technologies.
Shortlisted candidates will pitch their ideas live during the Falling Walls Science Summit 2021. All pitches will be broadcast via free livestream on the homepage of the Falling Walls Foundation falling-walls.com.
The jury chaired by Stefan von Holtzbrinck (Holtzbrinck Publishing Group) and Melanie Smallman (University College London) will select one winner from each category, who will claim the “Science Breakthrough of the Year” title.
In the category Falling Walls Engage, the jury reviewed a total of 189 applications from 80 countries. The selected 20 winners were chosen on the criteria of impact, approach, and transferability of their science engagement initiatives.
The list of winning ideas included a citizen science project for groundwater monitoring, an educational radio show to promote infant vaccination, art workshops for mental health awareness, a novel concept integrating science and languages, mobile STEM stations travelling between communities, a state-of art application merging videogames and science trivia and others.
The Falling Walls Venture jury received 102 submissions from 29 countries and chose 25 start-up ideas.
Among the winning projects were point-of-need medical testing, microbial set that recycles fossil-based plastics, analytics software for infrastructure investment in developing countries, sustainable production solutions using algae, ink made of captured carbon dioxide, all-round quantum computing service and a software detecting early-stage deep vein thrombosis, number one cause of preventable hospitals deaths.
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