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Falling Walls Science Breakthroughs of the Year Award
The Falling Walls Science Breakthroughs of the Year Award, initiated by the Berlin-based Falling Walls Foundation, showcases and celebrates the most recent breakthroughs in science and society from all around the world. Awardees are selected by a jury comprising globally recognised experts in the fields.
The Falling Walls Foundation, a charity supported by the German government and numerous acclaimed academic institutions, foundations, companies, and NGOs, has been organizing the Science Breakthroughs of the Year Award to foster dialogue on research and innovation globally and promote the latest scientific findings. The event brings together the latest breakthroughs, outstanding science projects and bright minds behind them in 10 scientific, innovation, and humanistic categories.
Finalists
Four CUHK researchers were shortlisted as finalists in four categories, including:
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| Engineering and Technology | Prof. Li Zhang – Microrobot swarms: Fundamentals and clinical use | Social Sciences and Humanities | Prof. Stuart M. McManus – The Global Renaissance | ||
| Prof. Li Zhang of the Faculty of Engineering is selected as a finalist in the category of Engineering and Technology. Prof. Zhang is a world leading pioneer in the development of microrobot collectives, from the fundamental understanding on their collective behaviors to in vivo tracking and intelligent delivery for clinical applications. His breakthroughs in microrobot swarm have high potential to revolutionise targeted therapy in tiny-and-tortuous lumens deep inside the body. | Prof. Stuart M. McManus of the Faculty of Arts is selected as a finalist in the category of Social Sciences and Humanities. His project examined how global reach of the Spanish and Portuguese empires prompted a remarkable flourishing of Renaissance culture in various parts of the early modern world. | ||
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| Life Science | Prof. Michael Pittman – Laser technology shows how dinosaurs took flight | Science Start-ups | Prof. Maggie Haitian Wang – Computational biology solution to enhance vaccine design and effectiveness | ||
| Prof. Michael Pittman of the Faculty of Science is selected as a finalist in the category of Life Science. His laser technique tells us how dinosaurs took flight long ago by revealing soft tissue flying structures that no one has ever seen. These details show that ancestors of birds adopted diverse flight strategies and evolved flight more than once. | Prof. Maggie Haitian Wang of the Faculty of Medicine is selected as a finalist in the category of Science Start-ups. Her start-up, Beth Bioinformatics, provides a bioinformatics and computational solution to predict virus evolution and enhance vaccine design. Her team has developed a platform using genome analysis to predict the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines with 95% accuracy.
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