Looking ahead: Research & Innovation in 2030
What will the world be like in 2030? Where will science take us? And what will be the impacts of global change already underway? Get a glimpse of the future from the world's leading experts on climate change, space exploration, aging, brain modeling and more, speaking at the 4th annual Frontiers Forum held in 2018.
See some of the science discussed:
Full speaker list & individual videos
Young blood
for old brains?
Tony Wyss-Coray
Stanford School of Medicine
Four years after his incredible discovery that blood from young mice can rejuvenate the brains of old mice, Tony Wyss-Coray gave an update on the factors responsible – and the prospect of treating neurodegenerative diseases and reversing aging.
Memory loss with aging annoys the heck out of Tony, a professor of neurology at Stanford. His eponymous lab studies brain aging and neurodegeneration, with a focus on age-related cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease. Tony is also co-director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Stanford University Medical School, associate director of the Center for Tissue Regeneration, Repair and Restoration at the Palo Alto VA, and sits on the board of directors of Alkahest, a start-up developing blood-derived therapies to improve vitality and function into old age.
Insights from
other worlds?
Carolyn Porco
University of California, Berkeley
Carolyn Porco presented a dramatic visual tour of the Saturn system through the eyes of her cameras on Cassini, and finish with a look at what the future is likely to bring – and the legacy that our explorations throughout the solar system leave behind.
Carolyn is behind NASA’s most iconic photos of the solar system’s planets and moons. She is also responsible, with Carl Sagan, for the "Pale Blue Dot" image of Earth taken by Voyager 1. Carolyn most recently led the imaging science team on the Cassini mission, which orbited Saturn from 2004 until September 15, 2017 when Cassini was de-orbited to burn up in Saturn's upper atmosphere. Currently visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, she is also active as a public spokesperson for science and exploration and has consulted on films such as Contact and 2009's Star Trek.
Meat without
animals?
Mark Post
Maastricht University
Following his on-air demonstration that a beef burger made from cultured cells is not only edible, but also tasty, Mark Post outlined his timeline for an affordable, completely animal-free system for growing meat in the lab.
A professor of physiology, Mark used his expertise in tissue engineering – specifically, creating blood vessels for bypass grafts – to pioneer a technique for producing meat from cultured muscle cells. Since then, the price per burger has dropped from €250,000 to €10, suggesting that in vitro meat could soon provide a more ethical and environmentally friendly alternative to conventional meat production from animals. His startup spinoff from Maastrict University, Mosa Meat, is working to bring the first lab-grown beef burger to the European market within the next few years.
Bad health from
climate change?
Paolo Vineis
Imperial College London
Heat waves, droughts, floods… we know extreme weather affects ecosystems and communities, but what about our health? Paolo Vineis highlighted the worrying links between the world’s changing climate and future disease trends.
Paolo co-developed the “exposome” concept: all environmental exposures during a life – including pollutants, diet, stress and climate factors – that interact to generate a molecular signature in the body and influence the transition from health to disease. His latest research focuses on biomarkers of disease risk as well the effects of climate change on non-communicable diseases. Paolo is professor of environmental epidemiology at Imperial College London and director of Unit of Genetic and Molecular Epidemiology at the Italian Institute for Genomic Medicine in Torino.
Ocean doom,
gloom or hope?
Nancy Knowlton
Smithsonian’s National Museum
of Natural History
As a counter to depressing news of coral bleaching, plastic pollution and endangered species, Nancy Knowlton described recent successes in marine conservation – and explain why we need to talk about them more often.
Nancy has devoted her life to studying, celebrating and striving to protect marine life. A coral reef biologist and scientific leader of the Census of Marine Life, her studies led to the now widespread recognition that marine diversity estimates are probably too low by a factor of ten. She is the Sant Chair for Marine Science at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, founder of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography of the University of California, San Diego, co-originator of #OceanOptimism and the Earth Optimism Summits and a member of the US National Academy of Sciences.
A digital
human Brain?
Henry Markram
Swiss Federal Institute
of Technology in Lausanne
Having created the first digital copy of a piece of the rodent neocortex on supercomputers, Henry Markram described how and when the Blue Brain Project will build a whole digital human brain – as well as what we can expect to learn en route and when it is simulated.
Henry has pioneered simulation neuroscience as a new path to understanding how the brain works. As professor of neuroscience at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), he founded the Brain Mind Institute, the Blue Brain Project and the Human Brain Project, a €1 Billion European initiative to simulate the brain. His research has shifted from experimentally reverse engineering neocortical tissue to developing a software ecosystem and algorithms to convert biological data into detailed digital reconstructions of brain tissue.
A currency
for good deeds?
Olinga Ta’eed
Centre for Citizenship,
Enterprise and Government
Imagine getting credits for purchasing ethically produced goods – or even for doing something nice. Olinga Ta’eed described exciting new cryptocurrencies based on social and other non-financial values.
Olinga developed the Social Earnings Ratio, the world’s most rapidly adopted impact metric to digitally capture intangible value. He is now developing revolutionary “alt coins” – such as Women’s Coin, Islamic Coin, Black Value Coin and the UN Sustainable Development Goals Coin – that transact this value using blockchain. Olinga is director of the Centre for Citizenship, Enterprise and Government, professor in social enterprise at the University of Northampton, chairman of university spin-out Seratio Ltd and founder of the IoV Blockchain Alliance for Good, CCEG Blockchain UN Lab and Rothbadi & Co, a large institutional blockchain consultancy.
No more
lab rats?
Thomas Hartung
Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health
Can animal testing be eliminated? Thomas Hartung examined the future of toxicity testing, including the use of big data and human in vitro models.
As part of his efforts to drive a paradigm shift in toxicity testing to improve public health, Thomas developed lab-grown “mini-brains” from human stem cells as an alternative to animal models for testing new drugs. His team also created the largest machine-readable toxicological database – allowing toxicity predictions by machine learning that outperform lab animals. Thomas is professor of Toxicology (Chair for Evidence-based Toxicology), Pharmacology, Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, and University of Konstanz, Germany. He is also director of their Centers for Alternatives to Animal Testing and heads the Human Toxome project.
Global health
for women?
Marleen Temmerman
Aga Khan University
Women make up half the world’s population – and gestate the other half. Marleen Temmerman spoke on efforts towards a world where all women, as well as men, have access to sexual and reproductive health information and services.
Marleen is a leading authority on women’s health, especially reproductive and violence issues. Despite many gender-barriers she studied gynecology and became Belgium's first female professor in OB/GYN. Marleen is currently chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Aga Khan University (AKU) Hospital Nairobi, director of the Centre of Excellence in Women, Child and Adolescent Health, AKU East-Africa, and professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Ghent University, Belgium. She is a former senator in the Belgian parliament, founder of the International Centre for Reproductive Health, and former director of the Department of Reproductive Health and Research at the WHO.
An Open Science
cloud?
Jean-Claude Burgelman
European Commission
Big data creates tremendous possibilities for research and the economy. Jean-Claude Burgelman described efforts to build a European Open Science Cloud for seamlessly moving, sharing and re-using scientific data across borders, institutions and research disciplines – and so fully exploit the potential of data to drive Open Science and the 4th industrial revolution.
Jean-Claude is a strong advocate for open science and data. He is currently Head of Unit Open Data Policy and Science Cloud and Chair of the DG Research and Innovation Taskforce on Open Science at the European Commission. Before joining the Commission, he was full professor of communication technology policy at the Free University of Brussels and director of the Centre for Studies on Media, Information and Telecommunication. Jean-Claude also chaired the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Innovation and was a member of its Science Advisory Committee.
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What makes
us human?
Idan Segev
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
From genes to machines – Idan Segev gave an overview of our unique biological features and how we may use new technologies to change ourselves.
Idan is interested in how neurons compute and dynamically adapt to our ever-changing environment. His current work is on modeling cortical circuits in detail and developing automated methods for generating models of different electrical and morphological neuron classes. The ultimate goal is to unravel how local fine variations in cortical network structure and activity underlie specific computations – and give rise to certain brain diseases or to a healthy (and “individual”) brain. He is the David & Inez Myers Professor in Computational Neuroscience, former director of the Neurobiology department and a member of the newly formed “Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences” at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Idan is also keenly interested in the connection between art and the brain.
Exponential
innovation?
Kamila Markram
Frontiers
We urgently need new solutions for clean energy, sustainable development and healthy living. Kamila Markram outlined how open science can guide artificial intelligence to exponential innovation that solves these critical challenges – and any other the human race may face.
Kamila is a neuroscientist and autism researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and co-founder and CEO of Frontiers – where she developed one of the world's largest and most impactful Open Science Platforms. As part of continuous innovations to this online platform – including a transparent and collaborative review process, a scalable publishing engine and article impact metrics – Kamila is now focusing on how AI can empower human decision-making to further improve the way science is reviewed, published, evaluated and disseminated to both researchers and the general public.
Adapted to
climate change?
Martin Siegert
Imperial College London
Climate change is here – so what can we do about it? Martin Siegert identified key climate change issues, strategies for mitigating these and the adaptation challenges they pose.
Martin is a glaciologist who studies past, present and future changes to the flow and form of ice sheets, particularly in Antarctica. He specializes in understanding processes beneath the ice, and has identified around 400 subglacial lakes as well as ancient preglacial surfaces across Antarctica. He is currently the co-director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change & Environment at Imperial College London. He leads the UK Lake Ellsworth Consortium which aims to identify life in, and acquire climate change records from, an ancient subglacial lake in West Antarctica, and the UK lead of the international ICECAP project, which acquires airborne geophysical data from across Antarctica.
A Circular economy
for waste?
Maria Pilar Bernal
Centro de Edafología y Biología Aplicada del Segura
Intensive livestock and agricultural systems, together with industrial development, produce large amounts of organic wastes – whose accumulation leads to significant environmental impacts, including greenhouse gas emissions and water and soil pollution. Maria Pilar Bernal described current waste management and how wastes can instead be turned into resources in a new circular economy strategy.
Maria is a specialist in soil chemistry. Her research focuses on biological technologies for recycling organic wastes, remediation of soils contaminated with heavy metals and other toxic compounds, and using organic wastes to enhance soil fertility and plant survival in degraded areas. She leads the Sustainability of Soil-Plant Systems group at Spain's Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas in the Centro de Edafología y Biología Aplicada del Segura.
landscape Genomics for RESOURCE Conservation?
Samuel Cushman
US Forestry Service
Natural resource use is intricately intertwined with ecology and social factors. Samuel Cushman presented landscape genomics as a tool to address critical challenges in natural resources conservation.
Samuel is a research ecologist at the US Forestry Service Rocky Mountain Research Station. His work focuses on landscape genetics and landscape genomics. Current studies include developing statistics and software for landscape pattern analysis; vegetation distribution, growth, regeneration along biophysical gradients; and effects of management, fire and climate regimes on vegetation pattern and process at landscape levels. Other work includes effective multi-resource monitoring, multi-scale wildlife habitat relationships modeling, and new approaches to model habitat connectivity. Samuel is also director of the Center for Landscape Science, an RMRS Research Center of Excellence.
rational
decision-MAKING?
Hauke Heekeren
Freie Universität Berlin
Liberal democracies and free markets hinge on the assumption that people are rational actors – yet we are only just beginning to understand how our fallible brains make voting, judgment, consumer and policy choices that set the directions of individuals and societies. Hauke Heekeren discussed how neuroscientific tools help us understand how we learn and assess the value of decision options, how we deliberate and how we choose.
Hauke is a professor of biological psychology and cognitive neuroscience and dean of the Department of Education and Psychology at Freie Universität Berlin. His primary research interests concern perceptual decision making, the roles of motivation and affect in decision making, and cognitive and affective components in normal and disturbed social cognition.