Agnieszka Żuchowska, PhD, from the WUT Faculty of Chemistry took the first ex aequo place in the Warsaw edition of the competition Falling Walls Lab. The third award was given to our doctoral student Mikołaj Więckowski.

The contestants had three minutes to present in English their idea to ”tear down a wall” in science, education, society. The presentation was evaluated by an international jury (including Professor Mariusz Malinowski, WUT Vice-Rector for Research) and the audience participating in the final.

Everyone could listen to the ideas of 20 students, doctoral students, young researchers and innovators from all over Poland. Among them, there were eight people connected with our University: Vijay Gupta, PhD (Faculty of Chemistry), Łukasz Kaczmarek, PhD (Faculty of Building Services, Hydro and Environmental Engineering), Artur Kasprzak, PhD (Faculty of Chemistry), Julia Kowalczuk (student, Faculty of Mechatronics), Anna Łapińska, PhD (Faculty of Physics), Priyanka Roy Chowdhury (doctoral student), Mikołaj Więckowski (doctoral student) and Agnieszka Żuchowska, PhD (Faculty of Chemistry).

The finalists proposed solutions to problems connected with treatment of diseases, management of natural resources, data management, modern materials, food, energy…

The jury awarded two first prizes – to Kiranmai Uppuluri from the Łukasiewicz Research Network – Institute of Microelectronics and Photonics (she talked about “tearing down walls” in analysis of data on water) and to Agnieszka Żuchowska, PhD, from the Warsaw University of Technology Faculty of Chemistry (in her speech she talked about preclinical research). The winners will take part in the international final of Faling Walls Lab, which will be held in Berlin at the beginning of November. There they will compete with 60 people from all over the world.

The second place in the Warsaw edition of the competition was awarded to Sada Raza from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences with the idea of a solution to the problem of bacteriophages contamination in bacteria-based industries. The third prize was awarded to Mikołaj Więckowski – a doctoral student from the Warsaw University of Technology, who concentrated on how not to waste valuable heat.

The audience distinguished Kiranmai Uppuluri from the Łukasiewicz Research Network – Institute of Microelectronics and Photonics.

The competition Falling Walls Lab Warsaw was initiated and organised by the company pro science, which specialises in improving the visibility of Polish science and researchers, in collaboration with the Centre for International Cooperation of the Warsaw University of Technology. The final was held on 15 September 2022 at our University.

All competition finalists from the Warsaw University of Technology

One of the competition jurors was Professor Mariusz Malinowski, WUT Vice-Rector for Research

During the final, the Small Hall of our Main Building was filled with people