Cândida Cardoso is the winner of this year’s SEA-EU Falling Walls Lab competition with a presentation titled “Breaking the Wall of Early Breast Cancer Detection.” Cândida Cardoso is a second-year PhD student in Biomedical Sciences at the University of the Algarve in Portugal. She works in the field of cancer epigenetics, and her research leverages epigenetics to enable early breast cancer detection from a simple blood sample.
As a reminder, Falling Walls Lab Split—a two-day international competition bringing together researchers, students, and innovators from Croatia, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Germany, and Norway—opened on Monday, July 6, at the University of Split School of Medicine. Contestants had the opportunity to present the specific problem they are currently addressing, along with the innovative solution or research idea they are developing.
Second and third place went to Rajalekshmi Narayana Sarma, with the topic “Breaking the Wall of Fertility Inequality,” and Zaira Zafroon, with the topic “Breaking the Global Data Barrier: A Gut Metagenome Atlas of 180,000 Samples.”
This year’s Falling Walls event in Split marks the first edition of the Falling Walls competition to be held at the level of a European university alliance. Out of 14 submitted applications, eight selected young researchers presented their innovative ideas and projects from various scientific fields in short, three-minute presentations; subsequently, an international jury comprising representatives from four European countries evaluated the presentations based on the Falling Walls program criteria.
On the first day of Falling Walls, contestants participated in a preparatory workshop where Dr. Branka Šegvić, from the independent Communication and Media program, provided training on science communication and offered presentation tips. The workshop was preceded by a panel discussion on the role of science communication in society, featuring Prof. Katarina Vukojević, MD, PhD—Vice-Dean for Science, Postgraduate Studies, and International Cooperation at the University of Split School of Medicine; Prof. Manuel Célio Conceição, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of the Algarve; and Assoc. Prof. Daniele Previtali, Associate Professor of Banking and Finance at Parthenope University of Naples. The panel was moderated by Dr. Umair Najeeb Mughal from Nord University in Norway.
Falling Walls Lab was held as part of the "Science Comes to Town" project, with the support of the SEA-EU alliance, and stands as one of the most prestigious international competitions for students, doctoral candidates, and early-career researchers. The competition aims to foster the development of innovative ideas and their effective communication, while connecting young researchers from diverse scientific fields and European countries.
The winner of the Split competition will represent the SEA-EU alliance at the global final in Berlin this November. We wish her success!