Event Picks: Co-Creating A Sustainable Now

The state of our planet fills many of us with concern and a sense of being overwhelmed. In order to meet the complex challenges, we need a paradigm shift that affects all areas of  societies – not tomorrow, but today.

With our focus topic at CAMPUS – Paradigm Shift. Co-Creating a Sustainable Now! –  outstanding scientific institutions and initiatives bring the diverse discourses, approaches and visions of their research fields onto the stage. We invite you to join the debates, take part in transdisciplinary exchange with the belief that change is possible with the support of science and research!

For all those who are interested in the topic (but also feel slightly overwhelmed by the extensive Science Week programme 😉 ), we have put together the following events. They cover a broad spectrum, offer very different formats and are (theoretically) all feasible in terms of time. This list consists of English-speaking events only. Here you will find a selection of German-speaking events.

4 NOV – CAMPUS

1. 09.30 – 11.00, New Normal Hall (hybrid): Green Science! Green Medicine? How the Pharmaceutical Industry can Co-Create a Sustainable NOW

The global pharmaceutical industry is still more emission-intensive than automobile production. NUVISAN – a Science Contract Research Organization – is therefore discussing what needs to be done to transform the industry to reaching its sustainability goals. 

1. 11.30 – 13.00, Deep Dive Forum : The Future Lies in Africa

Living with uncertainty is a common experience in large parts of the African continent. In this session the University of Bonn and their African partners will address, among other topics, how African futures can become accessible in collaborative scientific research and what can we learn from African experiences in regard to future-making practices.

1. 14.00 – 15.30, Collaborative Field: Jatun Yaku – Amazon of Rights

The IASS is inviting you to reflect on rights of nature by presenting a documentary film that traces the ebb and flow of rights in and of the Amazon across space and time, ethnographically exploring the question of what it means for a river to have rights, where these rights come from and what they might look like visually. The screening is followed by a discussion.

1. 15.30 – 18.00, Discovery Space

In addition to many exciting events, interactive exhibitions in the heart of the museum invite you to exchange knowledge and meet people on the two Campus days. Among the exhibits are a bio-based Späti, space gaming machines, a 10-minute museum or virtual reality journeys. 

1. 18.00 – 19.30, Deep Dive Forum: Digital Gold – Beneath the Surface of the Global Tech Industry

Despite its important contribution to the digital economy, the gold business remains uneven and non-transparent. This is particularly problematic for global workers. The UZH and ZhdK have collaborated on the exhibition Kamituga – Digital Gold (2022) to document and visualize the conditions of the miners and the workflow of the gold coming from Kamituga a region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Join their discussion to learn more about the project.

1. 19.30 – 21.00, New Normal Hall (hybrid): RETHINKING Humans and Machines

The future of robotics and machine learning will be about how humans and machines can form the best teams. The ETH Zürich will therefore discuss that designers must investigate solutions whereby humans and machines complement each other, maximizing the potential of both. We need to develop and build interactive human-machine platforms to challenge conventional approaches.

5 NOV – CAMPUS

1. 09.30 – 11.00, Collaborative Field: What is the Future Made Of?

What if we used nature’s design as inspiration for smarter and more sustainable materials in our everyday lives? What could such a bio-inspired world look like? CollActive Materials, together with the speculative designer Emilia Tikka, invites you to a hands-on speculation workshop. 

1. 11.30 – 13.00, Humboldt Auditorium: Film: Dear Future Children

Three countries, three conflicts, three women taking action for their and our future children: Watch this documentary and gain a very personal insight into the lives of three strong women from Chile, Uganda & Hongkong who are fighting for change.

1. 13.00 – 14.00, Entrance CAMPUS/ Speakers’ Corner:  Apocalypse now! Research, Solutions and Citizen Science

Soapbox Science Berlin and LGBTQ STEM Berlin come together to present exciting and new findings from science and advances in the fields of sustainability, waste management and climate research in short and understandable talks. They will also discuss how Citizen Science can contribute to these issues.

1. 14.00 – 15.30, Collaborative Field: In Science we Trust – Do we?

3M will present their State of Science Index and exchange views about how society can secure trustworthy science communication and thus benefit from the solutions that science can offer to solve the world’s most challenging issues.

1. 16.00 – 17.30, Humboldt Auditorium: Environmental Art as Activism with Beatie Wolfe

Join visionary Artist Beatie Wolfe in conversation with Tech Editor Karsten Lemm about creating award-winning environmental projects including an 800,000 year climate data visualisation to the world’s first bioplastic record.

1. 17.30 – 19.00, New Normal Hall (hybrid): RETHINKING Cities

To rethink cities, we need to re-build and strengthen the value chain across diverse actors and support it with tools such as building-information modeling (BIM), computational design algorithms, digital fabrication, and machine learning. Join the discussion by ETH Zürich & Enhance how we can only through collective efforts realize the true potential of cities.

Change of Location:

1. 19.30 – 21.45, Futurium: Film: What if We could Control Clouds?

The documentary film by Tuija Halttunen shows a Finnish scientist trying to produce rain in the desert of the United Arab Emirates. It describes the ethical dilemmas associated with a climate engineering project undertaken in a world of complex political and social dislocations.

7 NOV

1. 10.00 – 11.00, Digital: The Past, Present and Future of Drought 

Several parts of the world have seen yet another dry summer. Understanding drought has become more relevant than ever.  Nature Water, a new Nature Portfolio journal launching in January 2023, presents a panel discussion with renowned experts on climate science on key aspects like droughts affecting agriculture or understanding past patterns from paleoclimate records.

8 NOV

1. 14.00 – 15.00, Digital: The Future of Clean Energy Technologies: Accelerating the Transition to Carbon Neutrality

A fundamental shift in geopolitics and energy policy is currently taking place. Materials development is a core element in the innovation cycle to accelerate the energy transition. Join the planery table at the Falling Walls Science Summit, discussing how AI can be a key accelerator supporting the next generation of clean energy and storage technologies by leveraging complex data-driven insights that help us discover new materials faster than ever before.

1. 16.00 – 17.00, Digital: From Evidence to Action: Restoring Planetary Health with Science and Collaboration

The role of research and science application have proved to be fundamental to our health and the health of the planet. This table at the Falling Walls Science Summit will focus on how policy and public perception can shape and accelerate societal change to foster planetary health action. It will explore scientific leadership and engagement and its central importance to unlocking solutions.

9 NOV – Falling Walls Breakthrough Day

1. 09.15 – 09.30, Digital: Breaking the Wall of Plastic Waste

It would take a typical water bottle 2-3 years to biodegrade in a landfill. So what if we had more control over the degradation process and could speed it up? Ting Xu has found a ground-breaking way of improving the biodegradation by harnessing the power of biology. At Falling Walls, Xu explains how the process works, so that the same water bottle could be broken down in only 5-6 weeks.

1. 11.40 – 11.55, Digital: Breaking the Wall to Environmental Justice

Sunil Amrith work puts global migration at the heart of environmental history, bridging those two fields in new ways. At Falling Walls, Amrith argues that in order to understand environmental justice, we need to understand the history of migration and empire in the Global South. In his talk, he seeks to re-insert these perspectives into the discourse by magnifying voices from the Global South as he discusses the nature of “home” in the context of a changing climate.

1. 14.21 – 14.36, Digital: Breaking the Wall to Storing Data in Plants

In their interactive installation ‘Data Garden’, designers and artists Cyrus Clarke and Monika Seyfried propose an organism-based data center. It utilizes DNA technology to store and retrieve digital data from the DNA of plants, which in return create energy and absorb CO2. At Falling Walls, Seyfried and Clarke share insights from their project “Grow your Own Cloud” which represents an environmentally sustainable path to satisfying our data storage needs while also addressing the climate crisis.