Two WUT winners at Falling Walls Lab Wrocław

The contestants had to contend not only with stage fright and the difficult task of explaining complex topics clearly, but also with a strict time limit.

"The competition involved presenting an innovative solution or approach to a problem in three minutes. My presentation was entitled ‘Breaking the Wall of Energy Limits’," says Natalia Izdebska, a doctoral student at the WUT Doctoral School and the winner of this year’s Falling Walls Lab Wrocław. "The presentations were assessed in terms of innovation: for example, how important the problem is to the discipline concerned and how the solution could affect people’s everyday lives, how original and creative the proposed solution is, and whether it has the potential to become a breakthrough in its field. The same criteria will apply in the final. Before then, I will refine my presentation and slides. At the Wrocław event, we could use two slides: one addressing the problem and the other presenting its solution."

The second WUT prize-winner heard about the competition by chance and entered almost at the last minute. His presentation, "Breaking the Wall of Last-Mile Deliveries", addressed the challenge of delivering goods to customers, particularly courier parcels. Adam Król argued that transport innovation alone cannot solve this logistics problem: single-use shipping packaging must also be eliminated, as its environmental impact is greater than that of transporting the package and its contents.

"My solution is a transport organiser: a smart, reusable, modular transport unit that keeps consignments sorted in transit. Its principal benefits are significantly greater control and traceability of the load, additional protection, the elimination of disposable cardboard or plastic packaging, and integration with delivery vehicles, sorting and storage systems, and parcel lockers. Most importantly, it improves ergonomics and efficiency by removing the manual tasks involved in locating and delivering a parcel," explains Adam Król, a doctoral student at the WUT Doctoral School. "The proposed concept is the subject of my doctoral research, in which I am investigating its implementation, design and integration with the entire logistics system. My doctoral project will produce several demonstrator versions of these transport organisers for fulfilling e-commerce orders under different last-mile logistics models."

The WUT doctoral student likewise points to the challenge posed by the time limit and the restriction to just two slides.

"I found the event in Wrocław a very positive experience, and we heard many interesting presentations from different fields of science. The greatest and most stressful challenge was working within the three-minute format: presenting the essence of the problem, a proposed solution and its potential using just two slides and simple, clear English," says Adam Król. "I also very much like the idea of ‘breaking walls’. For me, particularly in my current research, the most important thing has always been to understand the problem as a whole and propose a solution that genuinely overcomes the difficulty."

For Adam Król, the issues addressed in his presentation extend well beyond the competition. Although, as he notes, his research is still at an early stage, he conducts studies and writes articles on sustainable urban logistics, urban transport infrastructure and the implementation of reusable transport units. This year, he has also begun working on a start-up that will soon offer a viable alternative to single-use shipping packaging.

Another challenge now awaits the two prize-winners. On 9 November, they will represent WUT at the global final in Berlin, held as part of the Science Summit.