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The mRNA vaccine era is just starting, according to Dr Özlem Türeci and Dr Uğur Şahin, the co-founders of Germany’s BioNTech. Image credit - BioNTech SE 2020, all rights reserved
coronavirus outbreak | interview | health | frontier research
08 April 2021

Q&A: BioNTech vaccine is only ‘mRNA 1.0’. This is just the beginning, say co-founders

The successful development of mRNA vaccines for Covid-19 is ‘transformational’ and opens the doors to new types of vaccines for other infectious diseases as well as cancer, according to Dr Özlem Türeci and Dr Uğur Şahin, the co-founders of Germany’s BioNTech.

'Asteroids hold clues about how our solar system formed. Their physical makeup and composition can also help answer the big question of how life emerged', tells Dr Naomi Murdoch, planetary scientist specialised in the geophysical evolution of asteroids at the French aeronautics and space institute ISAE-SUPAERO. Image credit - Naomi Murdoch
interview | space
06 April 2021

Q&A: How we’re gearing up to deflect asteroids that might cause Earth considerable damage

Asteroids — the bits and pieces left over from the formation of the inner planets — are a source of great curiosity for those keen to learn about the building blocks of our solar system, and to probe the chemistry of life.

Europe needs to see green tech breakthroughs in three areas: air, water and soil, says Dr Matteucci. Image credit - Francesco Matteucci
interview | environment | energy | policy
18 March 2021

Q&A: We need non-critical raw materials for green tech to flourish

Developing new, green technologies has been hailed as a way to both achieve Europe’s environmental goals and support its economic recovery following the coronavirus pandemic. But what type of green technologies do we need and how do we get them scaled up to a point where they can have a real impact?

We need to learn more about insects to correct our biased view of the world, says Dr Alexey Solodovnikov. Image credit: Alexey Solodovnikov
interview | environment
01 March 2021

Q&A: Climate monitoring, pandemic insight, decomposition – what insects do for us

Insects are vital to the health of our planet but they can also reveal a lot about climate change and help us fight future vector-borne disease outbreaks, says Alexey Solodovnikov, an associate professor at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, who runs the rove beetle-dedicated Solodovnikov Lab and is a curator at the Natural History Museum of Denmark. 

Global food supply chains can provide some resilience against bad weather conditions, plant diseases, political disruption and wars, says Dr Tessa Avermaete. Image credit - Anne Kumps
interview | agriculture
01 February 2021

Q&A: Why shorter isn’t necessarily better when it comes to food supply chains

Fears over supermarket shortages during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic led many people to buy their food from local producers, raising the prospect of a transformation in the way people get their food in the future. But while eating locally and shorter supply chains are often viewed as a more sustainable alternative to our global food system, the reality is much more complicated, explains Dr Tessa Avermaete, a bioeconomist at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium.

In the late 19th century a flu-like illness that caused loss of taste and smell likely came from the 'common cold' coronavirus in circulation today, according to Prof. Marc Van Ranst, an expert on coronaviruses. Image credit - Rob Stevens/KU Leuven
interview | coronavirus outbreak | health
27 January 2021

Q&A: Why history suggests Covid-19 is here to stay

A mysterious flu-like illness that caused loss of taste and smell in the late 19th century was probably caused by a coronavirus that still causes the ‘common cold’ in people today, according to Professor Marc Van Ranst at KU Leuven in Belgium, an expert on coronaviruses.

Pining down causality between online extreme speech and offline violence is very difficult, says Prof. Udupa but you can clearly identify trends and correlations. Image credit - LMU Munich
interview | social sciences | security | frontier research
18 January 2021

Q&A: Why cultural nuance matters in the fight against online extreme speech

Artificial intelligence (AI) used by governments and the corporate sector to detect and extinguish online extreme speech often misses important cultural nuance, but bringing in independent factcheckers as intermediaries could help step up the fight against online vitriol, according to Sahana Udupa, professor of media anthropology at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany.

interview | energy | environment | industry
05 January 2021

Q&A: ‘We need to reduce the ‘embodied energy’ of buildings

Retrofitting Europe’s buildings for energy efficiency is not enough to slash the carbon footprint of the construction sector and cut emissions in time to meet the Paris climate agreement goals, according to Dr Catherine De Wolf, assistant professor of design and construction management at TU Delft in the Netherlands.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus binds with human cells through its spike protein and researchers have recently discovered that it does this in two different ways. Image credit - rawpixel.com/ CC0 1.0
interview | coronavirus outbreak | health | frontier research
15 December 2020

Q&A: How Covid-19 hijacks human cells

The virus that causes Covid-19 hijacks human cells by exploiting a ‘doorway’ that is potentially also used by other deadly viruses such as HIV, dengue and Ebola, according to recent research that may help to explain why the coronavirus is so highly infectious to a wide range of organs in the body. Dr Yohei Yamauchi, a viral cell biologist at the University of Bristol, UK, who led the research, believes that the finding could not only lead to new drugs against Covid-19, but other anti-viral treatments that could be used to save patients’ lives in future pandemics. 

Around 20% of people surveyed by Prof. Bartels reported increased levels of happiness, optimism and meaning in life since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Image credit - Meike Bartels
interview | coronavirus outbreak | frontier research
07 December 2020

Q&A: Why some people’s wellbeing has improved during the pandemic

As the social isolation compelled by the pandemic swept many of us into a flurry of panic, grief and mental funk, a section of people actually reported improved levels of wellbeing, found biological psychologist Meike Bartels, a professor of genetics and wellbeing at VU Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

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