Latest news with #2025YoungInventorsPrize
Euronews
a day ago
- Science
- Euronews
Paper-based devices offer a greener future for consumer electronics
Every year, millions of tonnes of electronic waste end up in landfills, largely because small devices are built from materials that are nearly impossible to separate and recycle efficiently. At just 24 years old, Austrian industrial designer Franziska Kerber is working to change that: She has developed PAPE, a sustainable, paper-based alternative to plastic and fibreglass used in the casings of small electronic devices. Thanks to her work on PAPE, Kerber has been recognised as one of the top ten winners – called Tomorrow Shapers – of the 2025 Young Inventors Prize, awarded by the European Patent Office. 'Electronic waste is the fastest-growing waste stream worldwide and most electronic products are not designed in a way for them to be recycled,' Kerber explained. 'So I was aiming to create a product that not only improves recyclability, but creates a full circular system around it.' Unlike conventional plastics, which often trap valuable materials inside a device, PAPE is designed to dissolve in a targeted process. This allows manufacturers to retrieve electronic components without the need for shredding or chemical separation. PAPE is made from unused paper fibres, is durable and biodegradable, and was designed from the ground up with material recovery in mind. Kerber's commitment to sustainable design was shaped by both family and education. Her father, a physicist and award-winning inventor, introduced her to dissolvable electronics at a young age. While studying industrial design at FH Joanneum, she became increasingly focused on circular systems and material reuse – realising that solving e-waste requires more than just one recyclable component. 'Even if researchers create dissolvable, recyclable circuit boards, it doesn't really change anything if the rest of the product just ends up as waste again. The whole design has to evolve – otherwise, we're just shifting the problem instead of solving it,' she said. To develop PAPE, Kerber experimented with compressed paper fibres, refining the product through iterations that tested heat resistance, airflow, and durability. PAPE was specifically created for small consumer electronics like WiFi routers and smoke detectors, which are widespread but rarely recycled properly. 'I hope that this invention reaches a point when people talk about which WiFi router they should buy next, they will think about PAPE because it's just the better sustainable option and I love the design,' Kerber added. She is now working with startups and companies developing recyclable PCBs to bring PAPE to the market, aiming to shift the consumer electronics industry toward truly circular solutions. Moreover, Kerber's work contributes directly to United Nations Sustainable Development Goals SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure) and SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) – highlighting how thoughtful design can reduce waste and help shape a more sustainable future. The European Space Agency (ESA) isn't ruling out programme cuts or freezes if proposed budget cuts to the American space agency NASA are passed by the US Congress later this year. NASA's 2026 technical budget request, which was released last week, details possible cuts to 19 European space research programmes and could impact key technologies that ESA supplies to American Moon missions. The bill still needs Congress' approval, likely to come this autumn. Josef Aschbacher, ESA's director general, told journalists on Thursday that the council is 'doing its homework' to analyse what the impacts of possible NASA budget cuts could be and how investments made by its member states could be 'used in the most efficient way,' to respond. Aschbacher assured that no cuts or cancellations were coming until the US "finalised" its position, but that no matter the decision made by Congress, ESA would be "ready" and "well-prepared" to react. Carole Mundell, ESA's director of science, said the agency had determined 19 research projects could be impacted by the proposed NASA budget cuts. Mundell said ESA and its international partners could mitigate the damage to all but three of them: the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), a space probe that measures gravitational waves, Envision, ESA's first mission to Venus to measure its different atmospheres, and NewAthena, the world's largest X-Ray observatory. LISA and Envision have already been approved by the ESA council for funding, and NewAthena will come before the council but is expected to pass in 2027. ESA also supplies NASA with certain key parts for the NASA-led Artemis missions that would see humans return to the surface of the Moon for the first time since the 1960s. The ESA builds European Space Modules (ESMs) that provide electricity and oxygen to Orion, the spacecraft picked by NASA for the Artemis missions to the surface of the Moon. The ESA is also in charge of the Argonaut, Europe's lunar lander programme that would ultimately support these missions. It is also contributing three key elements for Gateway, the first international space station to be built around the Moon. The proposed NASA budget said that it will sustain funding for the Artemis II mission, scheduled for early 2026, and the Artemis III mission in 2027, but future missions would cancel the Gateway and retire Orion in the name of finding a more 'sustainable and cost-effective' lunar exploration strategy. Daniel Neuenschwander, ESA's director of human and robotic exploration, said the agency continues to fulfill its Gateway and ESM contracts with NASA. Even if cuts are approved, Argonaut and these European capabilities would still be used to support ESA missions, he added. Neuenschwander said ESA was now exploring with industry how some replacement technologies could be built in the EU. For example, the NASA cuts target the Rosalind Franklin ExoMars Rover mission, an ESA programme that drills down to the surface of the Red Planet to dig up organic material for further scientific study. NASA supplies three parts of the rover's technology, including the Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer (MOMA), an astrobiology instrument that does the sample extraction, and an americium radioisotope heater unit (RHU) to power the vehicle. Both technologies are not currently available to be produced in Europe, Neuenschwander said, but that engagement is starting to build them. The RHU in particular can also be used for future ESA lunar surface exploration missions, he added. Neuenschwander said ESA could rely on other partners, like the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), in the short term to supply technologies like the MOMA or RHU, but ultimately the goal is to build the necessary technology in Europe.
Euronews
a day ago
- Science
- Euronews
Lithuanian scientists transform enzyme engineering with AI
Enzymes are the hidden machinery behind many of today's medical, industrial, and environmental advances – but conventional enzyme design methods have reached their limits. That's where Laurynas Karpus (30), Vykintas Jauniškis (29), and Irmantas Rokaitis (28) come in. These Lithuanian innovators have pioneered an AI-powered platform that generates custom enzymes from scratch, free from the limitations of nature's templates. Thanks to their groundbreaking invention, they were named among the top ten Tomorrow Shapers in the European Patent Office's 2025 Young Inventors Prize. Their tool, developed through their company Biomatter, is known as the Intelligent Architecture™ platform. It doesn't just tweak what nature already offers – it creates entirely new enzymes designed for specific industrial and medical uses. 'By creating the technology for new enzyme design that is only limited by our imagination, we are unlocking a key bottleneck in solving health and sustainability problems in the 21st century,' the trio said in a joint statement. The platform combines machine learning, physics-based modeling, and experimental testing to continuously improve its enzyme outputs. The result? Scalable, efficient, and highly tailored biological tools that can accelerate everything from drug development to green chemistry. The journey began in 2017 at the Institute of Biotechnology at Vilnius University, where the trio collaborated on early AI enzyme-generation models. One of their first breakthroughs was ProteinGAN, a machine-learning model that demonstrated the feasibility of generating novel, functional enzymes. That success led them to co-found Biomatter in 2018 alongside scientists Rolandas Meškys and Donatas Repečka. Biomatter has since partnered with biotech leaders like Kirin, to produce Human Milk Oligosaccharides (HMOs) – essential nutrients for infant health – and with ArcticZymes Technologies, to develop better enzymes for gene therapy, vaccine manufacturing, and bioprocessing. 'Our goal is to make enzyme engineering faster, cheaper, and to solve a problem that couldn't be solved before,' says Rokaitis, emphasising Biomatter's ability to meet specific industry needs beyond traditional engineering in the field. 'Each enzyme we build has the potential to revolutionise that specific part of the industry and make it much more sustainable,' Karpus adds. Their work comes at a pivotal time. With the enzyme market expected to grow from €10 billion in 2025 to €15 billion by 2034, the need for next-generation enzyme solutions is critical. What's more, the Lithuanian team's innovation supports United Nations Sustainable Development Goals – specifically SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being) and SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure). Biomatter's AI-engineered enzymes aren't just a scientific advance – they're a promise of a more adaptive and sustainable future. For Karpus, this future – and our approach to it – is as much about mindset as it is about science: 'My advice to younger generations would be to not be afraid of building, because the future is not set in stone: the future is what you make of it.' 'Forever chemicals' may be taking their toll on our health before we are even born, new research suggests. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are a group of chemicals used in everyday products like food packaging and non-stick cookware. They're known as 'forever chemicals' because they don't degrade easily and can build up in the environment – and in our bodies. Scientists have detected PFAS in people's blood, breast milk, semen, livers, and even brains. They suspect these chemicals harm human health, with studies linking them to higher cholesterol, some cancers, and fertility problems, among other issues. The new research adds another complication to that list: high blood pressure during adolescence. The analysis followed more than 1,000 children in the US. It used maternal plasma collected shortly after they were born to identify their level of prenatal PFAS exposure, and matched it to doctors' records up until their 18th birthdays. Prenatal exposure to PFAS was linked to a higher risk of developing high blood pressure later in childhood, particularly in the teenage years, according to the study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association. The findings indicate that 'these forever chemicals can have long-lasting and potentially harmful effects that may only become apparent years after birth,' Zeyu Li, the study's lead author and a researcher at Johns Hopkins University in the US, said in a statement. The risk of elevated blood pressure was even higher for boys and Black children with higher PFAS levels at birth, the study found. In a surprise to researchers, a handful of forever chemicals were actually linked to lower diastolic, or bottom number, blood pressure in early childhood, though that changed when they entered their teenage years. Evidence on the health effects of PFAS has been mixed so far. While researchers believe these chemicals pose risks, it's difficult to pinpoint their exact impact because there are thousands of PFAS that could all interact in different ways, and because people's exposure changes over time. Even so, Li said the latest study underscores the need for researchers to track people's health and their PFAS levels over a long period of time, from early childhood to adolescence and beyond. Meanwhile, Mingyu Zhang, the study's senior author and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, said stronger environmental protections are needed to protect people from PFAS, given they are so ubiquitous that people cannot meaningfully limit their exposure on their own. That could include phasing out forever chemicals from consumer products and in industrial settings, he said, as well as better surveillance and limits on PFAS in water systems. 'This is not something individuals can solve on their own,' Zhang said.
