Falling Walls

The Falling Walls Conference is an annual science event in Berlin, 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. Sebastian Turner [de], a Berlin entrepreneur and publisher of the Tagesspiegel, who serves at the board of trustees of the foundation.

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, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Esther Duflo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Dennis Lo, Chinese University of Hong Kong
W.E. Moerner, Stanford University
Jian-Wei Pan, University of Science and Technology of China
Edgar Pieterse, University of Cape Town
Jürgen Schmidhuber, Swiss AI Lab
Christina Smolke, Stanford University

2016

Quarraisha Abdool Karim, CAPRISA, Durban
Kevin Bales, University of Nottingham
Neil Gershenfeld, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Rob Knight, University of California, San Diego
Lim Chuan Poh, A*STAR, Singapore
Randolph Nesse, Arizona State University
Peter Neumann, King's College London
Hélène Rey, London Business School
Katherine Richardson, University of Copenhagen
Eyal Weizman, Goldsmiths, University of London

2015

June Andrews, University of Stirling, UK
Bruce A. Beutler, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, USA
Emmanuelle Charpentier, Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, Germany
Ottmar Edenhofer, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany
Nilüfer Göle, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, France
Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind, London, UK
Dirk Helbing, 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, Médecins Sans Frontières, Switzerland
Saskia Sassen, Columbia University, New York City
Brian Schmidt, Australian National University
Jackie Yi-Ru Ying, Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, Singapore
Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, President, European Research Council (Session Host)
Rush D. Holt, CEO, American Association for the Advancement of Science (Session Host)
Johanna Wanka, German Federal Minister of Education and Research (Official Opening)

2014

David Chipperfield, 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, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany
Alan Rusbridger, Former Editor-in-Chief of The Guardian, UK
Thierry Zomahoun, African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), South Africa
Anton Zeilinger, 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, President of the Royal Society, UK (Session Host)
Rupert Stadler, 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, Columbia University, USA
Olafur Eliasson, artist
Jill Farrant, University of Cape Town, South Africa
Stephen Friend, President Sage Bionetworks, USA
Anita Goel, CEO Nanobiosym, USA
Rolf-Dieter Heuer, CERN, Switzerland
Jules A. Hoffmann, Université de Strasbourg, France
Robert P. Kirshner, Harvard University, USA
Daniel G. Nocera, Harvard University, USA
Onora O'Neill, 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, Secretary General Amnesty International, UK
Luc Steels, 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, London School of Economics
Philip Campbell, Nature Publishing Group
Awa Marie Coll-Seck, Senegal's Health Minister
David Harel, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
Michel D. Kazatchkine, UN Special Envoy for HIV/Aids in Eastern Europe and Central Asia
Alan I. Leshner, AAAS and Science
Daniel Libeskind, Architect
Helga Nowotny, European Research Council (ERC), Vienna
Ina Schieferdecker, Fraunhofer FOKUS/Technische Universität Berlin
Hal Varian, Google Inc.
Daniel Zajfman, 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, Harvard University
Ingrid Daubechies, Duke University
Robert E. Horn, Stanford University
Wang Hui, Tsinghua University, Beijing
Mary Kaldor, 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, nef (the new economics foundation), London

2010

Dalton Conley, Sociologist
Frederick Cooper, historian
Helmut Dosch, Physicist
Olafur Eliasson, artist
Doug Guthrie, Dean of The George Washington University School of Business
Olga Holtz, mathematician
Reinhard Hüttl, President at acatech
Thomas Lengauer, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics
Yves Leterme, Prime Minister of Belgium
Karl Ulrich Mayer, President of the Leibniz Association
Jürgen Mlynek, President of the Helmholtz Association
Annette Schavan, professor, German Federal Minister of Education and Research
Sabine Schmidtke, professor, Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania
Christian Wulff, President of Germany

2009

External links

Falling Walls – Official Site

References

Central Science: More 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: Breaking down walls in science
REGIERUNGonline: Rede von Bundeskanzlerin Merkel auf der Konferenz "Falling Walls"
Tagesspiegel: Die Leute wollen Cola classic
Tagesspiegel: Kontakt mit der Zukunft
WISSENSlogs: Falling Walls
Welt der Physik: Falling Walls 2009 – von Menschen und Mauern
Handelsblatt: Zukunftskonferenz in Berlin: Was die Wissenschaft verspricht
Die Welt: Mauerfall auch in der Forschung angemahnt
Berliner Morgenpost: Auch in der Forschung sollen Mauern fallen
Berliner Zeitung: Der Traum vom besseren Leben, as well published in Frankfurter Rundschau: Der Traum vom besseren Leben
BerliNews: Einstei'n bitte
After the U.S. Election, What's Next for Science?
No more walls
Falling Walls Lab comes to Manchester