The three finalists of the Italian round of the "http://www.unitn.it/fallingwalls-trento" Falling Walls Lab 2014 are Stefano Troncone (PhD student of Engineering, University Federico II of Naples, Italy) Susan Wache (PhD, Cognitive Science – Neurobiopsychologie, Osnabrück University, Germany) and Luca Ragazzoni (PhD at CRIMEDIM - Disaster and Emergency Medicine Research Centre, University of Eastern Piedmont).
Their projects were selected on 3 October by a technical jury during the Falling Walls Lab, held in Trento, at the Department of Sociology and social research.
Stefano Troncone was awarded the opportunity to present his research project in Berlin, on 8 November - the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall - to an international public, together with the other 99 finalists coming from the other European countries.
Troncone’s project is “Pandora”, an innovative wheelchair, thanks to which users regain their sense of balance and are able to make a series of movements and easily change their posture. It is a very light and transportable wheelchair. His project was selected among the ideas presented by the other 15 finalists.
This is a great visibility opportunity for young and brilliant researchers, who attracted many candidatures: 47 were submitted from Italy and the bordering countries.
The jury in charge of the project selection was made of key figures of the academic, entrepreneurial and research sectors, among whom Nicola Pugno (who will be a member of the Falling Walls Lab Finale in Berlin and was a speaker at Falling Walls and coordinator of the Trento round), Alessandro Roccavilla (Director of the Business Unit in Altran Italia), Barbara Mazzolai (Director of the Micro-Bio Robotics Centre of the Italian Institute of Technology), Federico Della Croce (Director of the Department of Control and Computer Engineering of the Polytechnic University of Turin), Sara Spilimbergo (Researchers of Industrial Engineering of the University of Trento), and Marco Sardina (R&D Director at Zambon Pharma).
More information on the Falling Walls Lab is available in the attached Press release.