The Falling Walls Conference is an annual science event in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

, Germany, that coincides with the anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall (9 November 1989). The one-day scientific conference showcases the research work of international scientists from a wide range of fields.

The Falling Walls Foundation

After the inaugural 2009 conference organized by the Einstein Foundation, an independent non-profit institution by the name of the Falling Walls Foundation was established through the support of the German Ministry of Education and Research and the Berlin Senator for Education, Science and Research. The foundation is managed by Tatjana König. She is supported by Prof. , a Berlin entrepreneur and publisher of the Tagesspiegel, who serves at the board of trustees of the foundation.

Jürgen Mlynek Jürgen Mlynek (born 15 March 1951, in Gronau, Lower Saxony) is a German physicist and was president of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres from 2005 to 2015. Biography Mlynek studied physics from 1970 to 1976 at the Technic ...

is the current chair of the board of trustees.

Conference format

Every speaker presents a talk of maximum 15 minutes, explaining how their scientific research helps to break down walls in science and society.

Notable speakers

2017

* Alexander Betts, University of Oxford *

Sarah Chayes Sarah Chayes (born March 5, 1962) is a former senior associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former reporter for National Public Radio, she also served as special advisor to the Ch ...

, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace * Esther Duflo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) *

Dennis Lo Dennis Yuk Ming Lo (, born 12 October 1963) is a Hong Kong molecular biologist, and an important contributor to the development of non-invasive prenatal testing. He is the current Associate Dean (Research) and Li Ka Shing Professor of Med ...

, Chinese University of Hong Kong *

W.E. Moerner William Esco Moerner (born June 24, 1953) is an American physical chemist and chemical physicist with current work in the biophysics and imaging of single molecules. He is credited with achieving the first optical detection and spectroscopy of a ...

, Stanford University *

Jian-Wei Pan Pan Jianwei (; born 11 March 1970) is a Chinese quantum physicist, university administrator and professor of physics at the University of Science and Technology of China. Pan is known for his work in the field of quantum entanglement, quantum inf ...

, University of Science and Technology of China *

Edgar Pieterse Edgar is a commonly used English given name, from an Anglo-Saxon name ''Eadgar'' (composed of '' ead'' "rich, prosperous" and ''gar'' "spear"). Like most Anglo-Saxon names, it fell out of use by the later medieval period; it was, however, rev ...

, University of Cape Town *

Jürgen Schmidhuber Jürgen Schmidhuber (born 17 January 1963) is a German computer scientist most noted for his work in the field of artificial intelligence, deep learning and artificial neural networks. He is a co-director of the Dalle Molle Institute for Artif ...

, Swiss AI Lab *

Christina Smolke Christina Smolke is an American synthetic biologist whose primary research is in the use of yeast to produce opioids for medical use. She is a Full Professor of Bioengineering and of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University. She is the edit ...

, Stanford University

2016

Quarraisha Abdool Karim Quarraisha Abdool Karim is an infectious diseases epidemiologist and co-founder and Associate Scientific Director of CAPRISA. She is a Professor in Clinical Epidemiology, Columbia University, New York and Pro-Vice Chancellor for African Health, ...

, CAPRISA, Durban * Kevin Bales, University of Nottingham *

Neil Gershenfeld Neil Adam Gershenfeld (born December 1, 1959) is an American professor at MIT and the director of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, a sister lab to the MIT Media Lab. His research studies are predominantly focused in interdisciplinary studies in ...

, Massachusetts Institute of Technology * Rob Knight, University of California, San Diego *

Lim Chuan Poh Lim Chuan Poh is a Singaporean civil servant, diplomat and former lieutenant-general who served as Chief of Defence Force (Singapore), Chief of Defence Force between 2000 and 2003. After leaving the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) in 2003, Lim ser ...

, A*STAR, Singapore *

Randolph Nesse Randolph M. Nesse (born 1948) is an American physician, scientist and author who is notable for his role as a founder of the field of evolutionary medicine and evolutionary psychiatry. He is professor of life sciences and ASU Foundation Professor ...

, Arizona State University * Peter Neumann, King's College London *

Hélène Rey Hélène Rey (born 1970) is a French economist who serves as Professor at London Business School (LBS). Her work focuses on international trade, financial imbalances, financial crises and the international monetary system. Early life and educatio ...

, London Business School * Katherine Richardson, University of Copenhagen *

Eyal Weizman Eyal Weizman MBE FBA (born 1970) is a British Israeli architect. He is the director of the research agency Forensic Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London where he is Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures and a founding director t ...

, Goldsmiths, University of London

2015

June Andrews June Andrews, , is a Scottish nurse who is an expert in dementia studies and aged care. She was the professor of dementia studies at the Dementia Services Development Centre at the University of Stirling. She is now Professor Emeritus. She has w ...

, University of Stirling, UK *

Bruce A. Beutler Bruce Alan Beutler ( ; born December 29, 1957) is an American immunologist and geneticist. Together with Jules A. Hoffmann, he received one-half of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for "their discoveries concerning the activation ...

, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, USA * Emmanuelle Charpentier, Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, Germany *

Ottmar Edenhofer Ottmar Georg Edenhofer (born 8 July 1961) is a German economist who is regarded as one of the world's leading experts on climate change policy, environmental and energy policy, and energy economics. His work has been heavily cited. Edenhofer curr ...

, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany *

Nilüfer Göle Nilüfer Göle (born 1953) is a Turkish sociologist and a contemporary Turkish academic who specializes in the political movement of today's educated, urbanized, and religious Muslim women. From 1986 to 2001 a professor at the Boğaziçi University ...

, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, France * Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind, London, UK *

Dirk Helbing Dirk Helbing (born January 19, 1965) is Professor of Computational Social Science at the Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences and affiliate of the Computer Science Department at ETH Zurich. Biography Dirk Helbing studied phy ...

, ETH Zurich, Switzerland * Naila Kabeer, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK * Wolfgang Ketterle, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA * Nina Kraus, Northwestern University, USA *

Joanne Liu Joanne Liu, M.D., O.Q., M.S.C, is a Canadian pediatric emergency medicine physician, Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Montreal, Professor of Clinical Medicine at McGill University, and the previous International President of M ...

, Médecins Sans Frontières, Switzerland *

Saskia Sassen Saskia Sassen (born January 5, 1947) is a Dutch-American sociologist noted for her analyses of globalization and international human migration. She is Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University in New York City, and Centennial ...

, Columbia University, New York City *

Brian Schmidt Brian Paul Schmidt (born 24 February 1967) is the Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University (ANU). He was previously a Distinguished Professor, Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and astrophysicist at the University's Mo ...

, Australian National University * Jackie Yi-Ru Ying, Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, Singapore *

Jean-Pierre Bourguignon Jean-Pierre Bourguignon (born 21 July 1947) is a French mathematician, working in the field of differential geometry. Biography Born in Lyon, he studied at École Polytechnique in Palaiseau, graduating in 1969. For his graduate studies he went t ...

, President, European Research Council (Session Host) * Rush D. Holt, CEO, American Association for the Advancement of Science (Session Host) *

Johanna Wanka Johanna Wanka (''née'' Müller; born 1 April 1951) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as Federal Minister for Education and Research in the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2013 until 2018. ...

, German Federal Minister of Education and Research (Official Opening)

2014

David Chipperfield Sir David Alan Chipperfield, (born 18 December 1953) is an English architect. He established David Chipperfield Architects in 1985. His major works include the River and Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire (1989–1998); the Museum ...

, David Chipperfield Architects * Karl Deisseroth, Stanford University, USA * Stefan Hell, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Germany * Lisa Kaltenegger, Cornell University, USA * Christof Koch, Allen Institute for Brain Science, USA * Nathan S. Lewis, California Institute of Technology, USA * Mariana Mazzucato, University of Sussex, UK *

Svante Pääbo Svante Pääbo (; born 20 April 1955) is a Swedish geneticist who specialises in the field of evolutionary genetics. As one of the founders of paleogenetics, he has worked extensively on the Neanderthal genome. In 1997, he became founding dire ...

, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany * Alan Rusbridger, Former Editor-in-Chief of

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

, UK * Thierry Zomahoun, African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), South Africa *

Anton Zeilinger Anton Zeilinger (; born 20 May 1945) is an Austrian quantum physicist and Nobel laureate in physics of 2022. Zeilinger is professor of physics emeritus at the University of Vienna and senior scientist at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Qua ...

, University of Vienna, Austria * Diane Griffin, vice-president of the United States National Academy of Sciences (Session Host) * Angela Merkel, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (Official Opening) *

Sir Paul Nurse Sir Paul Maxime Nurse (born 25 January 1949) is an English geneticist, former President of the Royal Society and Chief Executive and Director of the Francis Crick Institute. He was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along ...

, President of the Royal Society, UK (Session Host) *

Rupert Stadler Rupert Stadler (born 17 March 1963) is a German businessman and former chairman of the Vorstand (CEO) of Audi AG. He was arrested in June 2018 in connection with the Volkswagen emissions scandal. He was in custody in Germany until being released ...

, CEO, AUDI AG, Germany (Dinner speech) * Philippe Taquet, President of the French Academy of Sciences (Session Host) * Lev Zelenyi, Vice President of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Session Host)

2013

Jagdish N. Bhagwati Jagdish Natwarlal Bhagwati (born July 26, 1934) is an Indian-born naturalized American economist and one of the most influential trade theorists of his generation. He is a University Professor of economics and law at Columbia University and a Seni ...

, Columbia University, USA * Olafur Eliasson, artist *

Jill Farrant Jill Farrant, professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, is a leading expert on resurrection plants, which 'come back to life' from a desiccated, seemingly dead state when they are rehydrated. Research ...

, University of Cape Town, South Africa * Stephen Friend, President Sage Bionetworks, USA *

Anita Goel Anita Goel is an American physicist, physician, and scientist in the emerging field of Nanobiophysics. At the Nanobiosym Research Institute (NBS), Goel examines the physics of life and the way nanomotors read and write information into DNA. Edu ...

, CEO Nanobiosym, USA *

Rolf-Dieter Heuer Rolf-Dieter Heuer (; born 24 May 1948 in Bad Boll, Boll) is a German particle physics, particle physicist. From 2009 to 2015 he was List of Directors General of CERN, Director General of CERN and from 5 April 2016 to 9 April 2018 President of the ...

, CERN, Switzerland *

Jules A. Hoffmann Jules A. Hoffmann (; born 2 August 1941) is a Luxembourg-born French biologist. During his youth, growing up in Luxembourg, he developed a strong interest in insects under the influence of his father, Jos Hoffmann. This eventually resulted in the y ...

, Université de Strasbourg, France * Robert P. Kirshner, Harvard University, USA *

Daniel G. Nocera Daniel George Nocera (born July 3, 1957) is an American chemist, currently the Patterson Rockwood Professor of Energy in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences a ...

, Harvard University, USA *

Onora O'Neill Onora Sylvia O'Neill, Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve (born 23 August 1941) is a British philosopher and a crossbench member of the House of Lords. Early life and education Onora Sylvia O'Neill was born on 23 August 1941 in Aughafatten. The dau ...

, Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve, University of Cambridge, UK * Mark Pagel, University of Reading, UK * Dan Shechtman, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Israel *

Salil Shetty Salil Shetty (born 3 February 1961) is an Indian human rights activist who was the Secretary General of the human rights organization Amnesty International (2010–2018) till 31 July 2018. His tenure at Amnesty International was marred by signi ...

, Secretary General Amnesty International, UK *

Luc Steels Luc Steels (born in 1952) is a Belgium, Belgian scientist and artist. Steels is considered a pioneer of Artificial intelligence, Artificial Intelligence in Europe who has made contributions to expert systems, behavior based robotics, behavior-bas ...

, Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona, Spain * Ai Weiwei, artist

2012

* David Awschalom, University of California, Santa Barbara * Monique Breteler, Harvard School of Public Health in Boston *

Michael Bruter Michael Bruter is Professor of political science and European politics at the London School of Economics, where he directs the Electoral Psychology Observatory in collaboration with Sarah Harrison. He is also a co-founder of CODES Collaborative D ...

, London School of Economics * Philip Campbell, Nature Publishing Group * Awa Marie Coll-Seck, Senegal's Health Minister *

David Harel David Harel ( he, דוד הראל; born 12 April 1950) is a computer scientist, currently serving as President of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He has been on the faculty of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel since 1980, ...

, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel * Michel D. Kazatchkine, UN Special Envoy for HIV/Aids in Eastern Europe and Central Asia *

Alan I. Leshner Alan Leshner is a scientist and academic from the United States. Education Leshner received an undergraduate degree with Honors in psychology from Franklin and Marshall College in 1965. He earned an M.S. in physiological psychology from Rutgers U ...

, AAAS and Science *

Daniel Libeskind Daniel Libeskind (born May 12, 1946) is a Polish–American architect, artist, professor and set designer. Libeskind founded Studio Daniel Libeskind in 1989 with his wife, Nina, and is its principal design architect. He is known for the design a ...

, Architect * Helga Nowotny, European Research Council (ERC), Vienna * Ina Schieferdecker, Fraunhofer FOKUS/Technische Universität Berlin * Hal Varian, Google Inc. *

Daniel Zajfman Daniel Zajfman (Hebrew: דניאל זייפמן - born June 7, 1959) is an Israeli physicist whose main research interests are centered on the physics of simple molecular ions. On December 1, 2006 he was elected as the tenth president of the Weiz ...

, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel

2011

* Anastasia Ailamaki, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne * Nick Barton, Institute of Science and Technology, Austria * Aaron Ciechanover, Technion *

Robert Darnton Robert Choate Darnton (born May 10, 1939) is an American cultural historian and academic librarian who specializes in 18th-century France. He was director of the Harvard University Library from 2007 to 2016. Life Darnton was born in New York ...

, Harvard University *

Ingrid Daubechies Baroness Ingrid Daubechies ( ; ; born 17 August 1954) is a Belgian physicist and mathematician. She is best known for her work with wavelets in image compression. Daubechies is recognized for her study of the mathematical methods that enhance i ...

, Duke University *

Robert E. Horn Robert E. Horn (born 1933) is an American political scientist who taught at Harvard, Columbia, and Sheffield (U.K.) universities, and has been a visiting scholar at Stanford University's Center for the Study of Language and Information. He is k ...

, Stanford University * Wang Hui, Tsinghua University, Beijing *

Mary Kaldor Mary Henrietta Kaldor (born 16 March 1946) is a British academic, currently Professor of Global Governance at the London School of Economics, where she is also the Director of the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit. She also teaches ...

, London School of Economics * Ferenc Krausz, Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics Munich * Angela Merkel, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany * Helga Nowotny, European Research Council (ERC), Vienna * Kõji Omi, The Science and Technology in Society (STS) forum Kyoto * Annette Schavan, German Federal Minister of Education and Research * Dennis J. Snower, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy * Cédric Villani, Université de Lyon *

Stewart Wallis Stewart Wallis OBE is an advocate for a new economic system. He worked for Oxfam from 1992 to 2002, for which he was awarded an OBE. From 2003 to 2016, he was executive director of the New Economics Foundation. Currently, Wallis is the chair for ...

, nef (the new economics foundation), London

2010

Dalton Conley Dalton Clark Conley (born 1969) is an American sociologist. Conley is a professor at Princeton University and has written eight books, including a memoir and a sociology textbook. Education Conley attended Stuyvesant High School. He subsequentl ...

, Sociologist * Frederick Cooper, historian * Helmut Dosch,

Physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate caus ...

* Olafur Eliasson, artist *

Doug Guthrie Doug Guthrie is an American academic administrator, sociologist, and China scholar. He is currently professor of global leadership and director of China initiatives at the Thunderbird School of Global Management at The Arizona State University. H ...

, Dean of The George Washington University School of Business * Olga Holtz, mathematician * Reinhard Hüttl, President at acatech *

Thomas Lengauer Thomas Lengauer (born 12 November 1952) is a German computer scientist and computational biologist. Education Lengauer studied Mathematics at the Free University of Berlin, earning his Diploma in 1975 and a Dr. rer. nat. (equivalent to a PhD) in 1 ...

, Director at the

Max Planck Institute Max or MAX may refer to: Animals * Max (dog) (1983–2013), at one time purported to be the world's oldest living dog * Max (English Springer Spaniel), the first pet dog to win the PDSA Order of Merit (animal equivalent of OBE) * Max (gorilla) (1 ...

for Informatics *

Yves Leterme Yves Camille Désiré Leterme (; born 6 October 1960 in Wervik) is a Belgian politician, a leader of the Christian Democratic and Flemish party (CD&V). He was the prime minister of Belgium, from November 2009 to December 2011. Leterme was the ...

Prime Minister of Belgium german: Premierminister von Belgien , insignia = State Coat of Arms of Belgium.svg , insigniasize = 100px , insigniacaption = Coat of arms , insigniaalt = , flag = Government ...

* Karl Ulrich Mayer, President of the Leibniz Association *

, President of the Helmholtz Association * Annette Schavan, professor, German Federal Minister of Education and Research *

Sabine Schmidtke Sabine Schmidtke is a German academic, historian, and scholar of Islamic studies. She is Professor of Islamic Intellectual History at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Schmidtke was elected Member to the American Philosophical Societ ...

, professor,

Center for Advanced Judaic Studies The Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania—commonly called the Katz Center—is a postdoctoral research center devoted to the study of Jewish history and civilization. History The Katz Center is t ...

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

* Christian Wulff,

President of Germany The president of Germany, officially the Federal President of the Federal Republic of Germany (german: link=no, Bundespräsident der Bundesrepublik Deutschland),The official title within Germany is ', with ' being added in international corres ...

2009

Jutta Allmendinger Jutta Allmendinger (born September 26, 1956, in Mannheim) is a German sociologist who has been serving as the president of the WZB Berlin Social Science Center and a professor of educational sociology and labor market research at Humboldt Universi ...

* Alain Aspect *

Michel Brunet Michel Brunet may refer to: * Michel Brunet (historian) (1917–1985), Canadian historian * Michel Brunet (paleontologist) (born 1940), French paleontologist * Michel Brunet (figure skater) (born 1970), Canadian skater {{hndis, Brunet, Michel ...

* Dipesh Chakrabarty *

John-Dylan Haynes John-Dylan Haynes (born 1971) is a British-German brain researcher. Haynes studied psychology and philosophy at the University of Bremen from 1992 to 1997. In 2003 he received his doctorate from the Institute of Biology in Bremen. After researc ...

* Harold James (historian) * Angela Merkel *

Amélie Mummendey Amélie Mummendey (19 June 1944 in Bonn, Germany – 17 December 2018 in Jena, Germany) was a German social psychologist. From 2007 until her death, she was a Vice-Rector for the Graduate Academy at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. Biogra ...

Miguel Nicolelis Miguel Ângelo Laporta Nicolelis, M.D., Ph.D. (, born March 7, 1961), is a Brazilian scientist, physician and Duke School of Medicine Professor in Neuroscience at Duke University, best known for his pioneering work surrounding brain-computer i ...

* Tricia Striano *

Wendelin Werner Wendelin Werner (born 23 September 1968) is a German-born French mathematician working on random processes such as self-avoiding random walks, Brownian motion, Schramm–Loewner evolution, and related theories in probability theory and mathematica ...

* Thomas Wiegand * Muhammad Yunus

References

{{reflist * Central Science
Falling Walls''
* Cern Document Server
''Falling Walls''
* Scientific American
''How science helped bring down the Berlin Wall''
* Scientific American
''Walls to fall: 6 ideas at the intellectual frontier, from business models based on selflessness to glasses -free 3-D TV''
* Physicsworld.com

* REGIERUNGonline

* Tagesspiegel

* Tagesspiegel

* WISSENSlogs:
Falling Walls
' * Welt der Physik
''Falling Walls 2009 – von Menschen und Mauern''
* Handelsblatt:
Zukunftskonferenz in Berlin: Was die Wissenschaft verspricht
' * Die Welt

* Berliner Morgenpost

* Berliner Zeitung

as well published in Frankfurter Rundschau

* BerliNews
''Einstei'n bitte''

After the U.S. Election, What's Next for Science?

Falling Walls Lab comes to Manchester

External links

Falling Walls – Official Site
Science conferences