Over 20 renowned scientists
have confirmed participation in the forthcoming Falling Walls Conference 2014,
slated for November 9 in Berlin, reports NaijaAgroNet.
Most of the speakers, organisers say already confirmed
their participation.
One of the scientists, NaijaAgroNet was told
expected to thrill the conference is the bioengineer and psychiatrist Karl Deisseroth (Stanford
University) who is one of the founders of optogenetics, a method through which
genetically modified cells, which could be selectively activated and
deactivated using light signals.
“Applied to neuroscientific research, Deisseroth’s
process provides a new and highly detailed view of brain activity and a
valuable insight into neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s
and depression,” the organisers said in a press statement made available to NaijaAgroNet
by Lucie
Menz of Falling Walls Foundation gGmbH.
After promising developments in recent years,
immunotherapy is offering new hope in the fight against cancer. Novel
approaches successfully stimulate the body’s own immune system in such a way
that it can break through a tumour’s local protective barrier, detect cancer
cells and finally destroy them. Suzanne Topalian from the
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine is one of the leaders in this field
of research and will be speaking at the Falling Walls Conference about her
studies, which have substantially contributed to the development of new
therapeutic applications.
Christof Koch, Chief
Scientific Officer at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle is
world-renowned for researching one of the most controversial problems in
neuroscience – the question of the physical basis of human consciousness. Based
on information theory – and using new techniques and imaging technologies to
track the activity of individual brain cells – Koch is attempting to unveil the
mystery of consciousness by scientific explanation and measurement.
The Falling Walls Conference was first held in 2009 to
mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and has now developed
into a highly acclaimed platform for international research. The conference is
supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the Helmholtz
Association, the Robert Bosch Stiftung and numerous other academic
institutions, foundations and companies.
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