Falling Walls
sciencepunk | November 9, 2011Today I'll be writing a series of blogposts from the Falling Walls conference in Berlin. Each speaker is invited to discuss the ideas, inventions, and discoveries they believe will break down walls in their field.
Paul Chirik: How Modern Alchemy Can Lead to Inexpensive and Clean Technology
Professor of chemistry Paul Chirik is on a mission to turn lead into gold. Or, to be more precise, to make lead act like gold. Precious metals are instrumental to some of the most widespread and important chemical processes in our world, such as the osmium needed to synthesise fertiliser (so valuable that…
sb admin | November 9, 2011Today I'll be writing a series of blogposts from the Falling Walls conference in Berlin. Each speaker is invited to discuss the ideas, inventions, and discoveries they believe will break down walls in their field.
Robert E. Horn: How Visual Language Supports Decision Making About Wicked Problems and Social Messes
Let's face it, having "messes" listed as a research specialism on your business card is pretty neat. But Stanford's Robert Horn is exactly that, a man who studies messes, or more accurately "inter-related sets of problems", particularly because business and government strategies…
sciencepunk | November 9, 2011Today I'll be writing a series of blogposts from the Falling Walls conference in Berlin. Each speaker is invited to discuss the ideas, inventions, and discoveries they believe will break down walls in their field.
Robert E. Horn: How Visual Language Supports Decision Making About Wicked Problems and Social Messes
Let's face it, having "messes" listed as a research specialism on your business card is pretty neat. But Stanford's Robert Horn is exactly that, a man who studies messes, or more accurately "inter-related sets of problems", particularly because business and government strategies…
sciencepunk | November 9, 2011Today I'll be writing a series of blogposts from the Falling Walls conference in Berlin. Each speaker is invited to discuss the ideas, inventions, and discoveries they believe will break down walls in their field.
Robert Schlögl: How Heterogeneous Catalysis Can Replace Fossil Fuels
Robert Schlögl is Director of the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, discussing our reliance on fossil fuels. The problem isn't simply that they are a fast-diminishing resource, but that fossil fuels still represent the world's best energy storage system. We need to find new ways of generating…
sciencepunk | November 9, 2011Today I'll be writing a series of blogposts from the Falling Walls conference in Berlin. Each speaker is invited to discuss the ideas, inventions, and discoveries they believe will break down walls in their field.
Mary Kaldor: How Human Security Makes People Safe in a Global Era
The day's first speaker was Professor of Global Governance at the London School of Economics Mary Kaldor, who proposed the creation of a "global emergency services". During an exercise with the army (discussing the optimal way to retake a block of flats in Southampton that were occupied by a fictitious insurgent…