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Interview

Commissioner Gabriel says she is proud of the way European scientists and innovations have worked together to tackle the coronavirus pandemic. Image credit - European Union
interview | policy
08 October 2020

In the hotseat: 5 questions for Commissioner Gabriel

The only way for Europe to recover from the coronavirus crisis and build a better future is to work together and the pandemic has made that clearer than ever, according to EU Commissioner Mariya Gabriel. She told Horizon about the biggest impacts of the pandemic on research and innovation and her vision for where EU-funded research is headed.

Organic electronics are flexible and already being used to make curved screens but future applications could include biosensors and bendable solar panels. Image credit - Maurizio Pesce/Wikimedia, licenced under CC BY 2.0
interview | frontier research
05 October 2020

Transparent electronic books and human-looking robots: the new field of ‘organic electronics’

Electronics made from carbon rather than silicon could lead to a new generation of medical devices, sensors and perhaps even robots, according to Professor Andreas Hirsch, chair of organic chemistry at Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany.

Dr Derouazi says this year for the first time she’s seen scientific publications on cancer vaccines with really promising results. Image credit - Liliroze
interview | health
23 September 2020

Q&A: ‘Cancer vaccines will not replace surgery or chemo but could give long-lasting immunity’

Recent advances are bringing cancer vaccines much closer to reality, giving patients another weapon in their arsenal of cancer treatments, according to Dr Madiha Derouazi, CEO of Amal Therapeutics and one of three winners of the 2020 EU Prize for Women Innovators.

The speed and competitiveness of coronavirus research means sex disaggregation of the results – to understand if they are the same for males and females – is not happening, says Dr Sabine Oertelt-Prigione. Image credit: Dr Sabine Oertelt-Prigione/Radboudumc
interview | health | coronavirus outbreak
06 August 2020

Q&A: How coronavirus is putting a spotlight on sex differences in medicine

More than six months into the coronavirus crisis, data show that not just age, but also biological sex plays a pivotal role in the manifestation and response to Covid-19, with more men dying from acute infections versus women in the short term. This discrepancy has shined a spotlight on a key theme that has gained traction in recent years: is enough being done to account for sex and gender in disease and medicine? Not enough, says Dr Sabine Oertelt-Prigione, the chair of sex and gender-sensitive medicine at Radboud University in the Netherlands and a member of the European Commission’s expert group on gendered innovations.

Earth’s seven major tectonic plates draw apart from each other, rub together or collide, shaping the world we live in. Image credit - Pixabay/SpecialEventConsulting, licenced under Pixabay licence
interview | frontier research | environment
03 August 2020

Q&A: Plate tectonics is fundamental to understanding Earth’s evolution – but big questions remain

The division of the Earth’s surface into seven major mobile plates is fundamental to our planet’s uniqueness, creating a habitable environment and possibly the conditions under which life itself originated. The theory of plate tectonics is 50 years old, but there are many puzzles left to answer, says Dr Kate Rychert, who studies the geology at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

Moving people from cars to other forms of mobility is ‘extremely complex’, partly because there are powerful lobbies resisting change, says Dr Chaix. Image credit - Basile Chaix
interview | health | transport | frontier research
06 July 2020

Q&A: What lockdown air pollution reductions mean for the future of urban transport

People in cities experienced cleaner air during lockdowns, but a permanent shift to greener modes of transport and habits is ‘extremely complex to achieve’ given how much space is devoted to cars and the groups resisting change, says Dr Basile Chaix, who studies the health trade-offs we make as we travel.

interview | coronavirus outbreak | health
26 June 2020

Q&A: ‘We are only at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic’ – Prof. Peter Piot

We’re only at the start of the coronavirus pandemic although the second wave may take a different form to the first one, says veteran virologist Professor Peter Piot, who has spent the past 40 years tracking down and fighting viruses.

The immune system is changing all the time and Dr Aleksandra Walczak wants to distinguish between genuine responses and random fluctuations. Image credit - B. Eymann - Académie des sciences
interview | coronavirus outbreak | health | frontier research
16 June 2020

Q&A: How physics could explain why people respond differently to coronavirus infection

Some people’s immune systems contain pre-existing protection against coronavirus, indicating that they have encountered a similar infection to Covid-19 before, according to Dr Aleksandra Walczak, a physicist at École Normale Supérieure in Paris, France.

Prof. Baldwin says there are still many gaps in our knowledge of how to treat anxiety disorders, especially when therapy and anti-depressants do not work. Image credit - David Baldwin
interview | health
09 June 2020

Q&A: When and how does anxiety become a problem?

Short-term anxiety is a normal response to stress, but more needs to be done to understand and treat longer-term anxiety disorders, which affect the lives of millions of people across Europe and impose a significant economic burden on society, according to Professor David Baldwin, head of the mental health group at the University of Southampton, UK.

Covid-19 has shown us that countries that we thought were well prepared for something like coronavirus, were not, says Prof. McInnes. Image credit - Aberystwyth University
interview | coronavirus outbreak | health | frontier research
04 June 2020

Q&A: Coronavirus has shown the need for a global health system – but revealed its weaknesses too

We are seeing a failure of global health governance in response to Covid-19 because there are too many agencies with different interests, according Professor Colin McInnes, pro-vice chancellor at Aberystwyth University in Wales, UK, who says global institutions such as the World Health Organization and World Bank should stand together in crises.

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