Transcript

FameLab International Final 2025

From CERN · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 1 h 58 min · 16,930 words · 281 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "FameLab International Final 2025", an episode of CERN published November 26, 2025 (1 h 58 min, about 16,930 words). It mentions 22 people, works and ideas, including Fame Lab, Greg Foot, Pa Catapano, CERN, Cheltenham Festivals.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 10:00: Fame Lab, Greg Foot, CERN, TEDx
  2. – 20:00: Fame Lab, Greg Foot, CERN, Carissa Chzerati
  3. – 30:00: Georgia Franchesca, Fame Lab
  4. – 40:00: Naomi Vitzel, Fame Lab, Han Lee
  5. – 50:00: Fame Lab, Carissa Chzerati, Claire Lee, Julia Voyte
  6. – 1:00:00: Fame Lab, Luther Chip, Christina Scooper, Georgia Franchesca
  7. – 1:10:00: Fame Lab, Tammy Lee
  8. – 1:20:00: Fame Lab, Desi Musinska, Natalia Deepska
  9. – 1:30:00: Fame Lab, Georgia Franchesca
  10. – 1:40:00: Fame Lab
  11. – 1:50:00: Fame Lab
  12. – 1:58:26: Fame Lab, Pa Catapano, Claire Lee

Notable quotes from "FameLab International Final 2025"

  • Good evening and a very warm welcome to all of you tonight here at CERN Geneva Switzerland.
    about CERN · at
  • And with me on this adventure tonight, Greg Foot, a scientist turned science presenter and producer. Some of you might know him for his podcast, Sliced Bread. If you haven't do done it yet, check it out. It's wonderful. Greg has.
    about Greg Foot · at
  • Fame Lab is the leading science communication competition and training program in the world. Each year, thousands of researchers from across the globe receive training and then compete.
    about Fame Lab · at
  • Theoretical physicist specializing in searching for new fundamental particles and forces. No biggie. she began a career in physics at Cornell University before coming to CERN…
    about Carissa Chzerati · at
  • Amazing. She's been in the biggest experiments as an Atlas first and then CMS both at the LHC with a short passage through neutrinos at the neutrino platform the protodune. So I'm very glad.
    about Claire Lee · at
  • I'll come to Julia first. make sense with your role. Content. What does content mean for you here? So content, we're looking for talks that are scientifically accurate, but at…
    about Julia Voyte · at
  • Hi everyone, I'm Georgia Franchesca. I'll be representing Italy at the fame lab international finals in Geneva. I'm a neurossychologist and I work on gamma benzen oillation as biomarkers of.
    about Georgia Franchesca · at
  • Worth it. Thank you to the host country organizations all around Europe and the world. Fame Lab could not have happened without the national finals.
    about Cheltenham Festivals · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Greg Foot — Person · Host (co-host / event presenter) · 3 mentions · first at
    Co-hosts the event with Paola Catapano, explains FameLab, introduces finalists, and manages audience voting instructions.
  • Pa Catapano — Person · Host (co-host / event presenter) · 2 mentions · first at
    Co-hosts the FameLab International Final 2025 event at CERN and introduces the format, partners, judges, and finalists.
    You a proper introduction. On my left is a science communicator at CERN for the past 30 years. head of the editorial content production team in the communications group, a…
  • Claire Lee — Person · Judge (jury member; former FameLab winner) · 3 mentions · first at
    Serves as a judge and former FameLab winner; defines 'Charisma' and asks finalists about ethics and practical implications.
  • Julia Voyte — Person · Judge (jury member) · 2 mentions · first at
    Serves as one of three judges; defines the 'Content' judging criterion and questions finalists about applications and methods.
  • Carissa Chzerati — Person · Judge (jury member) · 2 mentions · first at
    Serves as a judge; frames the 'Clarity' criterion and asks finalists about ecosystem impacts, applications, and performance metrics.
  • Georgia Franchesca — Person · Finalist (competitor; Italy representative) · 4 mentions · first at
    Presents a talk on gamma brain rhythms and sensory stimulation as biomarkers/therapeutic avenues for cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s.
  • Naomi Vitzel — Person · Finalist (competitor; Germany representative) · 4 mentions · first at
    Presents a talk on rare-earth-based upconversion nanoparticles converting infrared to higher-energy light for medical/energy applications.
    We now combine the dye with our harmless blue glowing particle and the infrared light, we can use that to kill cancer cells without damaging healthy tissue.
  • Desi Musinska — Person · Finalist (competitor; Bulgaria representative) · 3 mentions · first at
    Presents a talk on biomimicry with examples (kingfisher-inspired bullet train nose; shark-skin-inspired ship coatings) improving efficiency.
    No. I studied to become a navigator at the Naval Academy in Varna. Great. Okay. So, given that we discussed Antarctica and the ships, what do you think we could learn if you were.
  • Christina Scooper — Person · Finalist (competitor; Czech Republic representative) · 2 mentions · first at
    Presents a talk on detecting anabolic steroids in meat, highlighting regulatory bans, black-market evasion, and new detection methodologies.
    My research is about searching methodology for detecting anabolic steroids in meat.
  • Luther Chip — Person · Finalist (competitor; South Africa representative) · 2 mentions · first at
    Presents a talk on using machine learning to predict hunger early-warning signals to enable timely interventions toward 'zero hunger'.
    Address this challenge, I use machine learning, which is a type of artificial intelligence, AI, to detect the early warning signs of hunger using historical data. I want you to…
  • Tammy Lee — Person · Finalist (competitor; Australia representative) · 2 mentions · first at
    Presents a talk on time-lapse embryo assessment in fertility clinics and the potential viability of atypical embryos that can self-correct.
    These are [clears throat] definitely not to scale, by the way. The egg is 10,000 times larger than the sperm cell. I work with these tiny human cells in the lab of a fertility…
  • Han Lee — Person · Finalist (competitor; Switzerland representative) · 1 mention · first at
    Presents a talk on gibbons as long-distance seed dispersers and their ecological role in rainforest biodiversity.
    Hi everyone, my name is Han Lee. I'm a post-docctoral researcher at the University of Zerich. I study what makes primates including humans social and curious from rainforest to daily life. I.
  • Natalia Deepska — Person · Finalist (competitor; Poland representative) · 1 mention · first at
    Presents a talk on magnesium batteries and supramolecular compounds enabling Mg2+ ion transport to improve cost/availability vs lithium.
    And now it's time to present our winner, Natalyia Deepska from the Warso University of Technology, who will introduce you to better batteries built from Lego bricks. Natalyia, the stage is yours.

Companies & orgs

  • CERN — Company · Host location · 3 mentions · first at
    The venue for the Fame Lab International Final 2025, a key location for scientific research.
  • Cheltenham Festivals — Company · Organizer · 5 mentions
    The organization behind the creation and running of Fame Lab.
  • European Space Agency — Company · Referenced organization · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned in the context of a participant's background in science communication.
    Communications group, a TEDex speaker and author. She has chronicled the LHC journey at sh at CERN and reported from Antarctica, the Arctic, the Amazon, and space with the European Space Agency.

Concepts & topics

  • World Wide Web — Concept · Referenced concept · 2 mentions
    Mentioned as one of the significant inventions resulting from CERN's collaborative environment.
    The invention of the worldwide web, which was the result of the laboratory's unique collaborative environment, is one of the striking examples.
  • Quantum Mechanics — Concept · Referenced concept · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as part of the foundational theories that led to modern technological advancements.
    Thompson's Nobel discovery of the electron led to modern atomic physics and set the stage for the development of quantum mechanics, opening up the era of electronics.

Places & events

  • Fame Lab — Event · Main event · 37 mentions · first at
    The primary focus of the podcast, a science communication competition and training program.
  • TEDx — Event · Referenced event · 2 mentions · first at
    Mentioned as part of a participant's background in science communication.
    Fame Lab participants have gone on to present TV shows, give TED talks, publish books, and so much more.
  • Nobel Prize — Event · Referenced event · 2 mentions
    Mentioned in the context of significant scientific discoveries.
    Thompson's Nobel discovery of the electron led to modern atomic physics and set the stage for the development of quantum mechanics, opening up the era of electronics.
  • Ted Talks — Event · Referenced event · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as an achievement of Fame Lab participants.
    Fame Lab participants have gone on to present TV shows, give TED talks, publish books, and so much more.

Full transcript with timestamps

Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. All right. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Everybody. Hey. Heat. Heat. We are science. We are discovery and experimentation. We are the change you see and how you see the change. We are exploration and education. [clears throat and music] We are fuel for those already flying high. An inspiration to those who say if they can, so can I. Together we are science.

Good evening and a very warm welcome to all of you tonight here at CERN Geneva Switzerland.

Welcome to Science Bree, the temple of science communication and science education for an exceptional event tonight. The competition for bing scientist Fame Lab International Final 2025. In a few minutes on this stage, nine competitors from nine different countries from Australia down to the UK will rise to the challenge of best science communication of the year.

We are your hosts for this evening. Hello. Uh on my left here, let me give you a proper introduction. On my left is a science communicator at CERN for the past 30 years. uh head of the editorial content production team in the communications group, a TEDex speaker and author. She has chronicled the LHC journey at sh at CERN and reported from Antarctica, the Arctic, the Amazon, and space with the European Space Agency. It's PA Catapano. Everybody,

thank you. Thank you, Greg. Thank you. And with me on this adventure tonight, Greg Foot, a scientist turned science presenter and producer. Some of you might know him for his podcast, Sliced Bread. If you haven't do done it yet, check it out. It's wonderful. Greg has been making science content for TV, YouTube, radio, and stage for 20 years. And he's also gone on some crazy adventures, as adventurous as mine. You've been diving deep into the ocean, trekking up to the Everest base camp, and climbing into the canopy of the Amazon rainforest. And tonight, we're here for another great adventure together here at CERN.

Yeah. So, I've never been to CERN, so this is genuinely really, really exciting. This is like a big tick off the old bucket list. So, thanks very much for having me.

It was high time to come. It was very, very welcome. Um, so look, I have been part of the Fame Lab family for many, many, many, many years. Um, if you're watching this, if you're sat here tonight and you don't know what Fame Lab is, it is the longest running and also the furthest reaching science communication competition and training program in the world. Um, but here's a little bit more. Here's a quick two-minute video to tell you more.

Fame Lab is the leading science communication competition and training program in the world. Each year, thousands of researchers from across the globe receive training and then compete in heat. Fame Lab was created by Chelenham Science Festival, making science accessible for all. Famel Labers have three minutes to capture their audience. Three judges judge them on the three C's of Fame Lab: Content, clarity, and charisma. And you, the audience, vote for your favorite, too. Each country crowns their national champion, and those national champions come together to compete for the title of Fame Lab International Champion.

Fame Lab participants have gone on to present TV shows, give TED talks, publish books, and so much more. Fame Lab is all about giving skills, confidence, and opportunities to scientists engineers and mathematicians to communicate their current research with the people that it impacts. There you go.

That was Fame Lab. That is Fame Lab. You can you can see why we're so proud of it, right?

Yeah. Also, this year is extra extra special. This year is 20 years since Chelton Festivals ran the first ever Fame Lab. So, this is our 20th birthday, everybody. Happy birthday, Fame.

Happy birthday, Fame Lab. And it's very, very exciting that we get to spend it here right at CERN. Uh, so thanks so much for having us, Paul.

Yes, we are very delighted indeed to collaborate with the Cheltonham Festivals, the big organizers of Fab. We have had your team around here for the last 24 hours. So busy, they couldn't explore this place. And CERN is a place of exploration. So, let's watch a short video to know all about CERN, more or less. More than 400,000 years ago, our ancestors first approached fire, realizing that it kept wild animals at bay. Through fascination and curiosity, prehistoric people came up with imaginative means to use fire for protection heat light food preservation, and social.

For most of human history, we have used multiple applications of fire to generate light and heat. But what brought us illumination at the flick of a switch? It certainly wasn't the development of candles. Since the 1600s, scientists and inventors have worked to understand the principles of electricity, making it possible to use it in our everyday life.

Today's world, dominated as it is by faster and faster pace of new technologies, is the result of a revolution in physics which started at the end of the 19th century. Maxwell's laws of electronamics led to electricity, radios, and television. Thompson's Nobel discovery of the electron led to modern atomic physics and set the stage for the development of quantum mechanics, opening up the era of electronics. New scientific theories, concepts, and discoveries proliferated and brought about cataclysmic transformations of the world at all levels technological social and cultural.

Created in 1954 by some of the protagonists of the 20th century physics revolution, CERN carries today the torch of the virtual circle of knowledge and innovation at an accelerated pace. As distant as it might seem from our daily lives, particle physics has always been a trailblazer for disruptive technologies which have benefited society at large. The invention of the worldwide web, which was the result of the laboratory's unique collaborative environment, is one of the striking examples. The unprecedented scale and technical requirements of the accelerators, detectors, and computing infrastructure needed by particle physicists for their research has constantly pushed the boundaries of technology.

The cutting edge technologies necessary to build particle accelerators have found applications that go well beyond scientific research. Today, there are over 40,000 accelerators around the world. Only 3% of them are used for fundamental research. The rest are in industry or in hospitals to treat patients. The gigantic detectors built by physicists to explore the unknown have fueled new developments in many fields from medical imaging to security to art authentication and restoration all the way to space exploration.

To cope with the huge amount of data generated by the collisions in the detectors, scientists are constantly pushing the limits of computing technology such as the grid, a system to share computer power and data storage across computing centers around the world, AI, and quantum computing. The new theories, concepts, and discoveries emerging from current and future research in particle physics will forever feed the virtual circle of knowledge and innovation. This interconnected journey will continue to unfold and is far from over.

Big video, isn't it? Yeah. That's a tribute to fundamental science. What a place, right? Okay. It's going to be exam at the end. So, I want to see how many questions everyone gets. Well, look, not only are we live here at this incredible place that is CERN, we're also streaming live on YouTube around the world. And also we're soon to be joined by our international finalists from nine countries around the world. Should we run through them powder in alphabetical them up? Let's start with by alphabetical order. Australia,

Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Poland, South Africa, Switzerland,

and the United Kingdom. Yes, nine countries. Nine countries. So, we are live, which means anyone watching live, we have a live chat. So, do let us know where in the world you are joining us from. Uh, and we'll try to say hello to you later. Big big thanks to our international partner organizations who run Fame Lab across the globe. Their support enables us to continue inspiring and to connecting people through science. And some of you are here in the room right now. So, let's do another long list. Pal, let's do a list of country partner shoutouts.

Right. The foundation for the WNA Museum in Australia. Thank you. Uh, beautiful science in Bulgaria.

Charles University in the Czech Republic. Beerfeld Marketing in Germany. Puadro in Italy.

Glad you said that one. University of Salazia and the Salazian Science Festival Katavviche

Jive Media Africa, National Research Foundation and Sasta South Africa. Uh, live science life science Zurich bioscience network and the graduate center at the University of Zurich in Switzerland.

And obviously bringing this all together for us tonight, the team at the Chelinham Festivals in the UK.

Thank you each and every one of all those people we've just named for continuing to fly the Fame Lab flag. We really, really appreciate your support. Thank you. We should also give a big word of thanks to the CERN public event partners too. So the CERN science and society foundation, the transport public and the found.

So it's been a really long journey to get here. Um we've reached the big grand finale. That's what today is all about. The international final where as you heard in that video, um the finalists have three minutes to share their science in engaging and an entertaining way. They can use props but they can't use slides.

No slides. And last but not least to complete our journey with us a very important task is that of the jury sitting with us tonight three physicists although the most of the contenders are not physicists but that's great. It's going to be great to see. We have for the jury Julia Voyte here with us tonight, a trained teacher and science education specialist. Most of the things that are shown on this stage, Science Gateway, come from Julia's teams. She's the education lead at CERN Science Gateway with a decade of experience in particle physics education. Then we have second judge.

Next up, we have Carissa Chzerati, uh, a theoretical physicist specializing in search. Yeah, come on. Wait till you hear the bio. Uh theoretical physicist specializing in searching for new fundamental particles and forces. No biggie. Uh she began a career in physics at Cornell University before coming to CERN to work on the NA62 experiment. Uh after that you did your PhD in high energy theoretical physics at Harvard University. Wow. Then moved on to your first post-doal position at MIT and then you're here at CERN. That is quite the academic CV. Uh outside of physics, you enjoy cycling through Switzerland and I love this.

You're a fervent believer that almost anything can be a DIY project. Wonderful. And last but not least, a Fame Lab winner, Claire Lee. Claire is a particle physicist, experimentalist from South Africa, one of the countries represented here. Fantastic science communicator. I have to say the first time I saw her was on a scab stage. Amazing. She's been in the biggest experiments as an Atlas first and then CMS both at the LHC with a short passage through neutrinos at the neutrino platform the protodune. So I'm very glad to have you the three of you tonight. Uh and it's going to be a tough job.

I mean what an amazing amazing lineup. One more huge round of applause please for our three incredible judges this evening. So judges as Paula says you do have a very tough job. Okay. First of all, you just need to sit there and listen to our incredible finalists uh do their presentation. Then ask a couple of questions as follow-ups so they can they can reply to you. And then when all of the finalists have presented uh your job, and I I I don't envy this, you're going to have to go huddle, debate, argue, fight, whatever it takes, okay?

Because you're going to choose two joint runners up. One person then to be crowned the Fame Lab International Champion 2025. Okay? We're looking for three names.

Three winners. Three winners at the end. That's it. I mean, easy easy, right? Yeah. Very simple.

Yeah. Now, as you heard in the video, the Fame Lab video earlier, uh, Fame Lab is judged on the three C's. Content, clarity, and charisma. So, judges, we're going to come to you uh to ask for a little summary of what essentially that means to you. I think I'll come to Julia first. Uh, make sense with your role. Content. What does content mean for you here? So content, we're looking for talks that are scientifically accurate, but at the same time well chosen and adapted to any broad audience, not too complicated, not overly simplified, and as well structured as a story.

Perfect. No easy task. Well said. Yeah. Karissa, you're a theoretical physicist. Clarity is essential for your formulas on the Blackbird. Tell us what you expect uh to judge with this criterion of clarity.

Right. So, we're looking for talks that are easy to follow even for non-experts like us, the physicists. Well, as we're happy to hear about other kinds of science tonight, and it should be clear and concise with an obvious message.

Awesome. Thank you so much. And last but not least, um, brings us to charisma. How would you define that, Cla?

Right. So, we are looking for charisma. It's very hard to be charismatic when not looking at the audience. That's what I'm going to do. Um, so we're talking about the whole package, uh, the way that your talk works, the way that you, uh, hold your presence on stage. Um, and we really, really just want you to grab our attention right at the start, uh, and then hold it, uh, there for the full three minutes until the end. So, best of luck all of you.

You got it. Thank you, Claire. That was fantastic. And of course, there is no competition without prizes.

Prizes. Yes. I'm sure everybody wants to know what are we going to win. Yes, please. So we have those wonderful three trophies for the two joint runners up and the fame lab international competition winner and the overall winner will also get an experience which is the best kind of prizes. They will get to go to the Cheltenham Science Festival experience this summer in 2026 in June, including travel, accommodation, free tickets to events, meetings, and opportunities of encounters with international scientists, engineers, and researchers.

That's amazing. And obviously the ultimate prize, the glory of the title of being crowned fame lab international winner 2025.

I can I can strongly rece one one cheer, one cheer. Uh I can strongly recommend Chelham Science Festival. It's absolutely brilliant science festival. They also get CERN goodie bags as well.

Yes, everybody everybody gets I'm really hoping I get one as well. Uh it depends if you behave well till the end of the day.

Noted. Uh there's one more title up for grabs. You will have heard it in the video earlier. Uh and there's one more trophy up for grabs as well. Uh and that is

the audience favorite. It's the audience favorite. So you the audience here in the room and people watching live, you get to vote and choose the audience favorite. Yes, the audience favorite can be the same winner as a joint runner up or the overall winner can be the same person. Uh the judges have nothing to say about the audience winner. It's only you in the room and people remotely that can vote. There will be a QR code that will be aired on social media and also shown behind my uh my my my back. Uh it's a voting QR code is not there yet. For now, the QR code you see will tell you more about the participants. So, are you ready to meet our finalists?

Now, you're clearly not. Apart from that group in the corner, you're not ready enough. Okay. Are you ready to meet this year's finalists?

Yes, that's better. We want to go We want to go full Eurovision tonight. Okay. I'm living out my dream. So, here's how it's going to work. We're going to introduce the finalist. Then, we're going to do a one minute video postcard Eurovvision style, right? before they then join us on stage. Uh we're also going to give you some clues about the country that they are from. Uh and you're going to try to guess that just in your own head or tell your neighbor. It's up to you. So our first finalist, here we go. D first finalist.

Clues for finalist number one. She's from the same region as I am. That's too much of a clue. Okay. Some some of them might know that. Some of them might know that. Okay. They're from a place uh where ancient ruins meet sunlit seas. Italy. Correct.

Italy is not a region. The region Puglia. Pulya. Pul Pulia. Yes. I'm working on it. I'm working on it.

Okay. Some interesting facts about our first finalist. Uh, she loves cozy cafes, the winter sea, and the smell of fresh cinnamon rolls. Me, too. Uh, she doesn't like shallow small talk. All be noted on that one if you chat to her later. She loves mystery novels, wandering through new places, and Brit rock. Uh, so DJ, cue the Oasis walk-on music. Yes. No. Okay. Right. Our first finalist is Georgia Franchesca with her talk entitled Flashes in the Dark Room: Restoring Blurred Memories. And she'll be joining us on stage after the video.

Heat. Hey, Heat. Hi everyone, I'm Georgia Franchesca. I'll be representing Italy at the fame lab international finals in Geneva. I'm a neurossychologist and I work on gamma benzen oillation as biomarkers of neurocognitive disorders through noninvasive brain stimulation techniques. Fame Love was the great chance to bring my research to a broader public, sparkling curiosity in them. Hopefully, we'll see each other in Geneva and we'll dance together.

Every photograph begins with a flesh. A single burst of light freezes a moment. Then the image slowly develops on paper. First shadows, then outlines, then the faces we recognize. But over time, photos lose their clarity. And at some point we may no longer recognize who it was. We take countless mental snapshots even without noticing. Right now for instance my brain is taking a picture of you. Your faces are processed in the visual cortex where edges, colors, expressions begins to take shape. Then voice, emotion, context are added transforming a glance into something meaningful. And one day if we meet again I might say I know that face. I know you.

At the core of this process is a fast delicate brain rhythm. Gamma waves in the brain dark room. They're like the regent that develops the image on paper helping turn perception into recognition. But with aging and even more in Alzheimer's disease, this rhythm grows unstable. As gamma waves lose their strength in synchrony, the developing light in the brain's dark room flickers. The face that once appeared clearly on the mental photograph begins to to fade away. First the details, the smile, the color of the eyes, then gradually the entire image dissolves until it becomes an unrecognizable blur. So we should understand when this fading begins and how we might bring back the image into focus.

Using EEG, we can pick inside the brain's dark room while the image is still develop developing. We can analyze the power and coordination of gamma waves to detect early signs of instability long before symptoms appear. But the most helpful part is that we are not just observers of this process. We can intervene using sensory neurom modulation specifically light flickers. Pulses of light tuned to the frequency of gamma acting like new regent in the developing image encouraging gently the brain to regain its natural synchrony. In animal models, gamma stimulation has proved to reduce the toxic proteins linked to Alzheimer.

In humans, results are encouraging. It strengthen cognitive functioning, supporting associative memory, including the ability of recognizing a face and remembering their name. So, imagine turning the pages of your mind's album and finding a face you thought was lost. A flicker of recognition rising from the blur. This is the vision driving my research to do for fading memories what light does in a dark room. Because even in the brain, every memory begins with a flesh. Thank you.

Whoa. Absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for starting us off

and kicking us off. It's a hard thing to do and you did it absolutely beautifully.

And you painted some fantastic pictures in our minds as well and told us about a lot of interesting research. So, thank you.

You can be happy with your performance. Absolutely. Yeah. So, we're going to take a couple of questions from the judges. Yes,

Julia, over to you first if we can. I'm now I'm very intrigued. Do you think this will ever have an application for us to help us learn, do our homework better, do our PhD better? So instead of just using it to to keep fading memories, do you see any other applications maybe?

Yes, actually uh we have checked if um resting state gamma waves uh do uh predict uh better uh performance in memory and it actually does. But the interesting part is that we can power this up. So uh we can support cognition even in LT adults. It does have an effect indeed. So hopefully we can help each other working better, study better.

Thank you. Thanks Judah. Let's go for a second question. CLA. Uh yeah, thank you so much. Uh that was really interesting. Um out of interest, how long does it take for this pro process when you're forming the the flash? How long does that process take?

Okay. Uh the main idea we are working on is that uh we are using uh 40s gamma stimulation as a probe to check whether uh we can uh stimulate the brain and see if there's a non-invasive biioarker of Alzheimer's disease or cognitive decline in general. But we are working also on um longer stimulation sessions uh for therapy. So it would be uh daily stimulation sessions hopefully one hour of stimulation. Alzheimer's disease is it's quite a hard and complex condition. It is neurodeenerative but as long as we can support uh the more the cognition the better it would be.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you judges for your questions and first but I mean thank you so much for killing yourself. It's absolutely brilliant. Cheers. Can you have a rest now? You can have a watch everyone else.

Yes. Yes. And we enjoy. Huge round of applause. So finalist um finalist number two doesn't come from very far away. Comes from a country where there are four official languages. I'm talking about German, French, Italian and Roman which you spoke and I learned today on the radio in 60,000 60,000 people in Switzerland speak Roman. So next country is Switzerland. Our finalist adores nonhuman animals and the forest. So it's a good country for that. She doesn't like skiing though. Not a good country for that. And we are very pleased to welcome on this stage after the video Sen Lee with a talk guardians of the forest with poop power.

Hi everyone, my name is Han Lee. I'm a post-docctoral researcher at the University of Zerich. I study what makes primates including humans social and curious from rainforest to daily life. I love sharing science in creative ways from performances to scientific plays and I can't wait to meet you all and see you very soon.

Sly, what is intelligence? Humans are often seen as mega intelligent. But on Earth, there are over 500 non-human primate species living, each surviving on their own way. So if we want to see all these wild and beautiful forms of intelligence, we better throw this human center lens away and open our eyes together. No.

Okay. So when you imagine superheroes, you might picture like Superman or Spider-Man or Iron Man with spectacular powers. But today I want to introduce you to very unexpected heroes. They don't wear caves and they swing through treetops and their superpower, it's poop. Yeah, I mean it's poop. Like it's really adorable right? So up in the canopy, um, gibbons primates travel from tree to tree to search for ripened fruit. And, um sorry ripen fruit. And to survive, they need to remember where fruit trees are and when they're ripened using their intelligence. But here's the twist. This intelligence doesn't just feed them. It feeds the entire forest. And when gibbons eat the fruits, the seeds travel safely through their digestive system.

And when they poop, a forest gets a delivery of poop parcels full of seeds. It's wrapped in natural fertilizer. So if given stayed on the tree where they ate the fruit and then pooped right underneath it, all those poops with seeds would pile up in one place and then too many seeds and too much competition and no new growth. But thankfully gibbons are such a sensible poopers and they're the most effective long-distance seed dispersers in these forests. A single gibbon like this one can spread 100 seeds away um from just one plant species in a single day by pooping. So when they know where to poop like here and there, they create nutrients for life. So for example this football they have different seas here and also another one to make another seas here.

So the hidden future of the forest in each poop parcel and not all animals are this good at it. For example squirrels they spread 50% of seas away from the tree where they were eaten and macac monkeys eh 10% but gibbons 90%. And those seeds travel more than 500 meters away from the tree. So again thanks to our superheroes gibbons namely the guardians of the forest those colorful seeds which are the future of the forests who would take root in the soil that would otherwise stay empty and that's how the forest gets alive and biodiverse. So next time when you think of a poop, it's not just something smelly. Remember it's a very wonderful superpower that gibbons use every day to guard and to grow the rainforest.

Well done. Well done. Lots of props. Yeah, that's takes some courage. So we now have couple of questions from the judges starting with Karissa. What you want to ask Sim?

Yeah. So thanks for the very engaging talk. Um so my question for you is do you have a sense of what the biggest change in the ecosystem would be if it weren't for the gibbons heroic efforts?

Yeah that's basically the main message of this talk. So not it's not only about the gibbons but each um animal they each has very different role in their ecosystem. So it's not only about like okay maybe there is no gibbon then one piece of the puzzle of the rainforest is missing. It's all about the connectiv connectivity. So if gibbons are not there and not doing their shitty jobs then it means that there's no plant growing well and there are like a overlap of trees which means the forest will collapse at any time.

So it's a very delicate balance. Julia I have to ask how does research look like? Do you really run around in a rainforest to collap? Yes. I need to clarify if anyone is you know like having this dream job to follow givens in the rainforest you really need to get ready to have your sheets on your head I'm sorry but that happened and I already experienced like 10 times by myself and whom I invited also they experienced it so yes we run away we follow them from 5:00 a.m. till they sleep which is like 56 p.m. all the way along the rainforest.

It's a nice adventure. You don't you don't get bored. Never. Yeah. My body. Yes. But my brain always tired but not bored.

Thank you. Thank you. Big applause to Shindi. You can join your colleague in the seat and then try the rest of the

So, they're considerate poopers because they help spread the seas, but they're clearly not super considerate on you.

Right. As we clear up this poop. Um, our third finalist. Here's a clue. Okay. See if you can work this out. So, our third finalist hails from a part of the country that is known for its Italianstyle flare. It features lively outdoor tables, colorful buildings, and narrow streets. It sounds very Italian, but it's not Italy. Anyone guess the country? Even bonus points.

We already got Italy. Yeah. Anyone guess the country? Even more points if you can guess the actual uh town or city. No. So, we're talking about Germany and we're talking about specifically Reaganburg in Germany. Uh, so our third finest loves big challenges and big cups of coffee. uh decaffeinated, same as me. Love it. Uh she's not a fan of getting up early, so it's very good that this is in the evening. We time that well. Uh she's a keen road cyclist, especially in the mountains. So I'm hoping she's going to come take her helmet off and then kind of launch into the speech. Our third finalist is Naomi Vitzel with a talk entitled How Light Brightens Tiny Particles Superpowers after this video.

It's the right place to talk about tiny particles. A dear colleague of mine has already participated last year and she actually became second and I was inspired by her so I decided to apply for it this year. I loved it. It was awesome, especially the experience of the collaborative brainstorming to make the talks of everyone even better than they were before. In that specific moment, to be honest, I was completely overwhelmed. But now, as some time has passed, I feel extremely honored to represent Germany and the Fame Lab International Finals.

Okay. Okay. Tonight, I want to shed some light on what superpowers and rare earth elements may have in common. But hold on a second. Rare earth elements, what was that about again? I know I've heard about them in the news recently, but what do they have to do with superpowers? That's what I'll be going to talk about the in the next few minutes. But first, we need to talk about light. Because visible light not just turns night into day, but also it comes in many different colors. And these different colors have different amounts of energy. While blue light is strong and contains large amounts of energy, red light is rather oh weak.

Sorry, excuse me. This diff difference is even more pronounced in light which we cannot see. Ultraviolet light for instance is so energetic that it can cause sunburn while infrared light is harmless and therefore often used in heat lamps. However, we can also convert light from one U into another. And that works usually by converting higher energy light such as blue light or ultraviolet light into light with less energy. By the way, that is also how the glowing stars work that you may remember from your childhood bedroom ceiling. But what if we did the exact opposite? Turned weak light into stronger light. That sounds impossible as we would need to make a lot out of a little. But is it really? That is what the superpowers of rare earth elements are all about. In my work, I deal with really, really tiny particles. In fact, they are about 10 million times smaller than this particular particle here. And they are

made from rare earths. And since rare earth elements can accumulate light energy, we can think of that particle just like a tiny piggy bank for light. And our coins are infrared light. So in other words, we just feed the particle with infrared light and enough of it has been collected blue light with higher energy as emitted. So what is actually happening here is not just really superpowers but rather pure physics. However, these particles can develop real superpowers when we may use them in the field of medicine because there are active substances such as this dye that are that can react to light um and can be then used to treat cancer in a targeted manner. However, unfortunately, these dyes usually require light with a large amount of energy to work. But if we now combine the dye with our harmless blue glowing particle and the infrared light, we can use that to kill cancer cells without damaging healthy tissue.

And that is where the particles reveal their true superpowers. They transform harmless heat radiation into a therapeutic tool that is gentle on the body, however powerful against cancer.

Strong prop game. Very strong prop game from lots of our finalist. I'm not coming too close to that. Um, right. Let's get a few questions for you. Uh, Cla, let's go to you.

Um, thanks. I'm still reeling from the killing of the cancer. In fact, tell me more about your props. How did you decide to do?

Okay. Well, I thought of how could I like picture the particles that are extremely extremely small. So, I decided to go just for a huge one. Um, and in fact, our particles are similar to globes. So, I decided to use a global prop. Um, and then I needed to find an analogy for the accumulation of N radiation in the particles. And I came up with the piggy bank picture because that very illustrates very well how the particles might work from a more simpler perspective. So that is why I decided to use that one.

Thanks Carissa. Yeah. So you gave us a very important example of medical technologies. Um however I'm a theoretical physicist so I don't care about real world applications. uh can you think of other ways that we can use this research besides this very important application that you mentioned?

Sure. So one problem is that um in the light spectrum and the non-visible spectrum infrared light has a very high um uh like concentration. know it is um very highly distributed um and we would need to make use of that NI radiation and we surely can think of using those nanop particles to collect or harvest the n radiation for example for energy applications like in photovalttics um because this uh radiation is still which is not accessible with photo photovolta tags and therefore we could also use them at nano particles um as application.

Thank you so much. Thank you judges. Thank you Naomi. Time for our number four finalist comes from a country right in the center of Europe used to be called Bohemia. I'm talking about the Czech Republic and our candidate. She loves dancing, hiking and the eternal question is do I do science or do I dance? And she completed her doctorate a few days ago. So congratulations already without having to extend their studies.

So ladies and gentlemen, here is Christina Scoopa just after the video. A lot of people think that science is just for scientists and it's not true. I like speaking and I want to try speak in front of the audience about what I'm passionate about. My research is about searching methodology for detecting anabolic steroids in meat.

It's been 15th birthday of Fame Lab in the Czech Republic and we are really looking forward to the international audience. Would you like a burger and extra bacon and just a little bit of anabolic steroids? No. Well, that might be a bit of a problem. And and why does it even bother you? Are you afraid of infertility, cancer, or heart failure? Oh, I got that because those are possible side effects of anabolic steroid. So maybe you'd rather pass because this is a true story with a taste of something darker. Something is hidden in the meat. Some silent seasoning.

Basically, you are swallowing the leftovers of a science experiment you were not told about. Anabolic steroids. You probably know steroids from bodybuilding where they help men grows big muscles. It's the same with animals. After anabolic steroid application, animals grow faster and the amount of meat it's much higher. That's why meat producers started using them. However, in all states in the European Union is a strict ban for using anabolic steroids due to concern about negative side effects I mentioned earlier. I know Switzerland is not part of the European Union, but you have the same rules.

Trust me, I checked it. So, how is it possible that we still need to worry about steroids in Europe? It's mainly because of imported meat, especially from countries like USA or Argentina where they use steroids widely and after that fraud happens and black market is always one step ahead. Of course, we do have control laboratories in Europe, but the current detection methods are no longer sufficient. Let's imagine it like this. If we use high concentration of single anabolic steroids, it exceeds the detection threshold and we can find it easily. But if we use cocktails of different anabolic steroids at once, each one in very low concentrations and these concentrations are below the detection threshold, we cannot find them. But together they are just strong or even stronger as a single high dose.

And that's the problem. But all hope not lost. In Berna, we are fighting back. We creating a new methodology for steroid detection based on hisytologology and proteomics. And we searching for some markers or imprints left behind by anabolic steroids to reveal the seasoning that has been hidden in the food for too long. So one day soon if you bite into the burger, it will be just that, a burger. No secrets, no silent seasoning. And we will be able to say bonapeti and without worries and like this you can look like even without steroids.

Well done Christina. Are you ready for some questions from the jury? I hope so. Okay, let's start with Julia.

You open up a new whole new world for me. Um I have to consider my meat consumption. Do you still eat burgers?

Oh, yes, because I love them. And yeah, thank you. I will continue as well. Thank you,

Claire. As someone who also loves and eats burgers, um what would your message be to consumers uh to pay like to be aware of this? Yeah, you know it's hard to say because we cannot say that for 100% you get a cancer or you will have a heart problems if you consume the meat. The problem is that we cannot uh make experiments from from you from people. We just can test it these animals and we know what damages on the animals are. But if you eat these animals, we can just presume what it's done to you, you know. So for example in the US if I told them for 100 I'm 100% sure that you get a cancer from this burger I think they uh did never use anabolic steroids at all but we cannot do that we just can presume these uh like negative size on the humans happy thank you Christina with the silent seasoning go enjoy the rest of the evening while we proceed to our fifth finalist Also, happy happy birthday

Czech Republic for 15 years of Fame Lab. All right. As well. Yeah. Happy birthday. Yeah. Our fifth finalist. Okay. Here we go. Pop quiz joins us from the country that holds the most rugby world titles.

Is that New Zealand? Come on. Come on. Rugby. South Africa is the answer. South Africa.

Yes or no. So, we asked our fifth finalist what he loves and he says ice cream, donuts, and napping. Very good. We asked what he doesn't like and understand if you said melted ice cream, stale donuts, and interrupted naps. Uh, very clever. So, I'm going to go wake him up. Our next finalist is Luther for his talk entitled Turning Data into Dinner after this video. Like most people, I found myself thinking a lot about the future. I think about the kind of future we envision for ourselves and most importantly what it will take for us to get there. Hi, my name is Luther. I'm a doctoral researcher at Stellenbos University working at the intersection of artificial intelligence and food systems. In my research, I envision a future with zero hunger. Fame Lab brought together science communicators from 10 institutions across South Africa to share ideas about different and positive futures. Fame Lab

felt like a place that could equip and empower a young scientist like myself to share my vision with people beyond my lab. I am determined to use this voice to turn a shared vision into a shared future, one with zero hunger.

All around the world, we are in a race with time and every second counts. To put this into perspective, in just 3 minutes about 20 children somewhere around the world will die from hunger related causes. Even though evidence has shown us time and again there is more than enough food to feed each and every one of us. As a matter of fact, the United Nations most recent report on the state of global food and nutrition security clearly indicates that food production and reserves are more than adequate to feed up to 10 billion people, which is more than the current global population.

This alone leads us to what feels like a simple question on the surface, but actually quite complex when you begin to investigate. Why is hunger still a global grand challenge? Well, research on food security shows that the problem is not just food itself. It's more so about timing. The challenge is how to accurately predict when and where hunger will strike before it's too late. In order to address this challenge, I use machine learning, which is a type of artificial intelligence, AI, to detect the early warning signs of hunger using historical data. I want you to think of machine learning as a family of methods that can be used to train your computer to process and understand complex and large volumes of real world data and information. In my case, I use machine learning to build what I call a digital superbrain, which is a system that demonstrates intelligence on a scale that no human mind can match.

It's super fast, never forgets, doesn't get tired, and most importantly, it can be used to look into the future and warn us about the incoming dangers of hunger. So, I trained this digital model using data collected from all over the world, looking at things such as rainfall patterns, drought, food prices, conflict, and even war. With each new piece of data and information that I feed into this digital brain, it keeps getting smarter and faster at recognizing the signs of hunger. Here's the shift my research brings. It demonstrates how AI, when used responsibly and intentionally, can be used to empower decision makers to act on time and hopefully accelerate our hunger towards zero hunger.

Thank you so much, Luther. Thank you. Thank you. Right, let's jump straight to Cararissa please.

Wow, you all are making me feel quite guilty about what I do for a living. Um, so thanks for making this planet better. Um, so my question for you is that predicting hunger is half the battle as you said in the end. Uh, given that we have the information to predict it, what's the next step? How do people actually get food to where it needs to be? Okay, that's very important. So the reality, let me just point out, you know, the actual fact of food. The food is actually there, right? But then the problem is how do we take it to where it needs to be on time? That's the challenge right there. But in order to do that, we need to be able to identify where it's actually needed. The problem now is how do we do that, you know, well in advance. So this requires a lot of future thinking. It's a lot of anticipation. So, what I do is reduce uncertainty so that people that are actually in decision-m roles can

actually act on time. Interesting. Uh we'll do a quick question, Julia. Go on. Yeah. What what do you want the uh to the audience to take away from your talk today?

Okay, that's a very good question. So from this talk I want people to realize that even though we may know what hunger is, the reality is most of us do not quite understand it. And actually while you may have had you know coffee you know breakfast, lunch, dinner, there are people out there who are actually hungry. So from this I want you to realize that solving hunger is not just another person's problem. It requires all of us our collective and wellcoordinated action. So everyone has a role to play in our contribution to zero hunger.

Thank you so much Lisa. Thank you. So we've done five finalists. Uh so before we do the next four, let's do a quick recap

who we heard from also for our judges. Yes. um what we heard and where were they?

Go on, you start. I start with Georgia Franchesca Scaramutzi from Italy with flashes in the dark room restoring blurred memories.

Then we had Seyan from Switzerland with guardians of the forest with poop power.

We had Naomi Vitzel from Germany with how light Brightens tiny particles superpowers.

Then we had Christina Scooper from the Czech Republic with the silent seasoning.

And just left the stage, Luther Chip from South Africa with turning data into dinner. Well done you lot. Right. Yeah. Five down, four to go.

So for our sixth finalist, uh it's a country very close to us today. Not geographically, but uh it's your country is the country of the Celton festivals. It's the UK. And the candidate loves Disney movies and music. Is not a fan of dogs, not a fan of British weather, although she's living in the UK, but she's originally from India where Bangalore is called the Silicon Valley. and her name is Spatika Jayaram with a talk entitled Why Brains Matter after the video.

To be honest, British weather is pretty rubbish. Oh my god. Oh my god. I can't believe it.

Hi, I'm Spatika. I'm a PhD student in neuroscience and I'm here representing England. I love the concept of breaking down your work within 3 minutes to an audience that's very diverse and vast. And I've got to learn a huge amount of things from all my fellow competitors. And it's super exciting. As scientists, we spend a lot of time in our own bubbles surrounded by our jargon and our comfort zones. And we forget the bigger picture. We're in an era where attention spans are dwindling. So learning to communicate in shorter and shorter periods of time is only going to help us. I'm most excited about understanding social behaviors because I think that defines us as a species. It's also something that vastly changed uh when I moved 8,000 miles from home to do my PhD. And I've always been interested in understanding the brain circuits that make us social beings.

We're here today to talk about science. So why not talk about the science of Fame Lab? Because I was thinking one of the reasons why Fame Lab is as popular as it is is because it takes something from you that you dispense with on a minute-by-minute basis, your attention. And today we're going to go into your brains and understand what they do when you try to pay attention to this talk and what might happen when your mind starts to wander away into its happy place. Like mine was doing this morning as I sat through Swiss Air's supposedly life-saving airline safety demonstration.

I remember the steward picking up the seat belt and going, you pull the strap to tighten. You lift the buckle to release. And I thought, what if we could understand attention the same way? What if one action could tighten our focus and one could release it? This is no longer science fiction. Neuroscientists have started to uncover the fundamental basis of what makes us pay attention to things and what causes us to be distracted. And to do this, they've started to go deep inside all of your brains down to your brain cells called neurons. And they've learned to listen.

You see, just like you and I talk using words, your neurons are communicating to each other using the language of electrical impulses. By recording their electrical activity, we can eavesdrop on these conversations and listen to what they're saying when you pay attention versus when you're distracted. And it turns out that when your mind is wandering away in its happy zoned out state, your neurons are speaking a slowpaced language, the language of ripples, like they might do when you're washing dishes on a Sunday evening. But suppose you hear the fire alarm ring and you have to jump back to focus. Your neurons are now speaking a different language, the fast-paced language of spikes. So in this way, your neuronal conversations literally oscillate between the spikes that tighten your attention and the ripples that release it. And what this can help us do one day is help people living with attentional

disabilities which is characteristic of several neuroscychiatric disorders where people struggle to switch from one task to another because they're unable to regulate their attention and focus. We can now target our therapies to the very root of the issue. These tiny neuronal conversations and at the end of the day we're weird society. On one hand we crave attention and on the other we're starved for it. So the next time someone asks you about the science of fame lab, remember that today wasn't just about you and me in communication. It was all the way down to your neurons, the seat belts of your attention chattering away in conversation. Thank you.

Well done. Well done. So we have questions from the judges starting with Claire.

Thank you so much. Um as someone with ADHD, I found this uh very very interesting. So um in fact this research that you're talking about how does this differ from traditional methods of uh combating uh attention deficit stuff like with stimulants.

Right. So we have a lot of therapies in place right now which are helpful for many different types of people but they're also not helpful for all types of people because we're all individual in different ways and we respond differently to drugs and other forms of therapy. So the reason I talked about this is because it's in a preclinical stage and it's very important to give uh light to these uh early stages of research because they could one day translate back to where therapies are today because the therapies were also started off at the preclinical stage and the hope is that we can one day use these neuronal conversations which are ubiquitous to everybody to sort of help everybody.

Great. Karesa, your question to Spatika. Great. So, thanks again for the presentation. So, my question to you is, do you have any therapies in place that can wean the population off of Tik Tok?

Um, I think, okay, I'm from India. India has a Tik Tok ban. A very good example. Is that enough of a reply? Is that Are you happy?

Thank you. Thank you. Go back to your seat and enjoy the rest of the talks. Thank you so much, Greg.

Right. Finalist number seven hails from the country with the longest fence in the world.

Is that America? Australia. Australia. 10 points. Well done. So, our next speaker uh loves karaoke and Wicked the musical. I went and saw the second film uh at the weekend. It's good. Really enjoyed it. Recommend it. Uh, she is not a fan of licorice, mosquitoes, and thinking that there's one more crisp in the crisp packet, but there isn't. We all feel your pain. Our next finalist is Tammy Lee with a talk entitled Atypical Embryo question mark after this video.

Welcome to the Australian Fame Lab National Final of 2025. They are the new emerging voices of Australian science who are going above and beyond to communicate their science to not only their peers but also to industry and general society. Our contestants have been training for the best part of this year entering through several competition rounds including state semi-finals to reach the Australian finals here tonight. Initiatives like Fame Lab are so important because they support diverse, dynamic role models who connect with the community and inspire the next generation of scientists.

Ladies and gentlemen, the 2025 Fame Lab winner is Tammy Lee. I can't believe it to be honest. I'm shaking still. I don't know if you can see, but yes, I am excited. I thoroughly encourage everyone to apply for Fame Lab.

Take a look at your thumb. Now, that's 85 million cells there, but you're made of a lot more. If we rewind the clock a little bit though, we all started with just two cells, the egg and the humble sperm. These are [clears throat] definitely not to scale, by the way. The egg is 10,000 times larger than the sperm cell. I work with these tiny human cells in the lab of a fertility clinic because for some hopeful parents, science plays a role in growing their families. The egg and the sperm form an embryo. And it's my job to look at a group of embryos and pick the one with the greatest potential for successful pregnancy.

Now, traditionally, embryos are selected based on their still image, but my research uses time-lapse videos. I like to call them embryo movies. So, let's zoom in. We expect to see a cell of an embryo divide from one boom to two cells, then four, eight, and so on. But this doesn't always happen. I've seen a cell of an embryo divide, but then merges to one again. Wait, what? That's not in the textbook. I've even seen a cell of an embryo divide, but into three cells, not two. Definitely not in the textbook either. As these funky embryos don't follow the textbook, they're often overlooked and even discarded as they're assumed to have the wrong number of chromosomes.

But for me, I wanted to know, do these funky embryos have potential? And are we dismissing those that deserve a chance? Because for that hopeful parent, the funky embryo might be all they have in the lab, their one chance at having their baby. So for my PhD, I watched the movies of these funky embryos frame by frame. And some of them can make it. They can selfcorrect by removing abnormal cells from forming part of the embryo entirely. and they can implant and become healthy, beautiful babies. My research is helping us in the lab make better decisions for more hopeful parents. And the future of fertility science, if you ask me, I think it's pretty egg cell ant.

Thank you, Tammy. enjoyed that. Love a pun. Uh Julia, I'll go to you. Can you tell us a bit more about your research methodology? You really sit in front of a screen and you look at those images

essentially. Yes. So, we have special incubators in the lab that takes photos of the embryos every 10 minutes across seven different focal planes. So, what we're doing, um, essentially what I did was track every single cell to see if it did a funky division like that and then tr keep tracking that one to see if it indeed self-corrects by removing it from forming part of the embryo entirely. It is, I will say, it's very manually taxing. So, AI, I'm coming for you after my PhD.

Yeah, fascinating next chapter. Um, Claire please. Thanks. I understand this is beyond this question is beyond the scope of the research but what are the ethical implications of uh for example using one of these atypical embryos.

So by ethical implications I believe as we my personal belief is we should be giving every embryo that has the potential a chance. So some of these hopeful hopeful parents um they may have be of high maternal age. They will have a really low chance of becoming um pregnant. So I believe that even though the risk I guess the percentage is very low the best place is in the body to put it back.

Yeah. Thanks very much. Thank you so much. Great stuff. Cheers. Thank you. So, we got to number eight. Our penultimate finalist is from a country whose alphabet has 32 unique letters and the words have a lot of consonants. I have a colleague in my team from Poland. And our candidate, she likes the weather when it's a little foggy, maybe a romantic type, likes snowboarding, rock climbing, doesn't like spring because of allergies. and her name is Natalia and she's going to talk about better batteries built from Lego bricks after the usual video.

Fame la Poland shines bright once again proudly hosted by the University of Celisia in Katvita and here's what you need to know about our region. It's a buzzing place of science, technology and innovation in Celisia. We are passionate about science communication. That's why we host and organize the SIN science festival Katavita, one of Europe's largest science events. Curiosity, creativity, and passion all run in our blood. So, we're proud to be part of the fame lab community. During the national final, we celebrated the power of science.

And now it's time to present our winner, Natalyia Deepska from the Warso University of Technology, who will introduce you to better batteries built from Lego bricks. Natalyia, the stage is yours.

If I had to sum up my research in four words, it would be batteries will be better. I work on batteries, which everyone uses every day. You certainly know the feeling when during an extremely important scrolling session, your phone gives its last beep and discharges completely. And maybe you wonder why do electric cars have such bad PR in Europe. It's because you cannot drive from Geneva to Warso on a single charge and there are either few charges on the way or they're all occupied. But what if I told you we can only charge our phones once a week? Or what if we could buy an electric car that would allow us to travel half of Europe on a single charge?

This is exactly what the research in my PhD will be used for. Currently, all batteries are based on lithium. It's very expensive. Batteries, let's be honest, do not have the highest capacities. They work for a short time. They quickly lose their original lifespan. My solution to these problems is magnesium. Magnesium is the fifth most common element in Earth's crust. We have high probability that there is magnesium in the sun that we brought here in our shoes. Everything would be great. But magnesium batteries do not want to work.

Why? Magnesium is not such reactive metal as lithium. It underos passivation. That means it's covered with an insulating layer on the surface. It would be best if the charge in the battery was carried by ions. Magnesium doesn't want to disintegrate into ions. It has two positive charge which is hard to maintain on the battery. But this is where my research comes in on a white horse. I add supra molecular compounds that is nonfunctioning magnesium cells. Such compounds are huge organic structures that we chemists can build from chemical blocks like Lego bricks.

From Lego you can build huge Mercedes G-Class or large hydron collider model and I can build this fancy chemical spheres. My molecules promote the formation of MG2 plus and act as a lanes for them. Thanks to this without any external interference without passivation the ion carries the charge in the battery. It's a bit like having as many lanes on the highway as there are currently cars on it so that everyone can reach the destination without the need to overtake traffic jams dangers. A little spoiler, it all works. And I hope that in a few years I will have a smartwatch powered by magnesium battery on my wrist. My name is Natalia and remember me when you get in your magnesium battery powered LIO.

I definitely want to wait for that. Oh yeah, I want a magnesium powered G-Class.

So now we have questions. I'm sure there our jury is very very curious to ask you questions and we start with Karissa.

Yeah. So thanks so much. Um so my question for you is what is the improvement that we would get of magnesium over lithium? You can tell me either in time of driving or power output or whatever is the most convenient units. uh it would be the cost. Right now lithium is critical material. It's mined with in in third world countries with children hands and that's why we need to change the crucial material. So we are looking for something that is abundant and really cheap and that's why we chose magnesium.

Good. Next question from Ulia. What excites you most about your research project?

Oh my god, I really love my molecules. You see you see I I I like I uh drew drew them myself and they act like uh little carriers of magnesium. So they just pass the magnesium between themselves and it's it's really interesting to to modify those molecules and to see how they pass the magnesium. It's like magic.

Yeah. Thank you very much, Natal. Thank you so much. Enjoy the rest of the evening. One more talk to go.

Yeah. Last, but by no means least, our ninth and final finalist um is from the sea capital of one of the oldest countries in Europe. One of the oldest countries in Europe. The sea capital is called VA. Does that help?

Black Sea. Shout it out. Bulgaria. Oh, Bulgaria indeed. I think there's a few Bulgarians in. Our final finalist loves watching movies and dancing. There's a few dancers, aren't there, in the in the lineup. Uh this she's she's been dancing as a ballerina since she was seven. She's not a fan of dry, dull theory of ill-mannered people either. Um, she's also a cadet studying to become a navigator. So, I hope she finds a way to the stage.

I like that. Our final finalist is DC with her talk entitled Biomimicry: Nature as the Ultimate Inventor after this video.

The Beautiful Science Foundation, home to the Sophia Science Festival, proudly restored Fame Lab in Bulgaria after an absence of three years. We set out to look for Bulgaria's 16th science communication champion. Five heats in the capital Sophia, ancient Plovdiff, the Black Sea port city of Varna, and for the first time ever in fame lab history in Antarctica at the Bulgarian Antarctic base. Her name is Dyslava Mosinska or simply Desi. I joined Fame Lab, she said, because I wanted to push myself. I love Famel Lab because it gives me a stage to share the ideas that genuinely excite me. It's not just about presenting science. It's about showing how alive and creative it can be. And now, please welcome ballet dancer turned future ship navigator and fame Bulgaria winner, Desi Musinska.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard our biomimicry adventure across Japan, where every vehicle we take is inspired not by a human genius, but by nature. Our journey begins with the famous Shinkansen bullet train. Now, when Japan first built it, the train was really, really fast, like 300 miles per hour, but it was also really loud. The problem came because every time the train exited the tunnel, the air in front of it got so compressed that when it left the tunnel, it came out as a shock wave, disturbing nearby neighborhoods and wildlife. There was an engineer on the engineering team who also happened to be a bird watcher. One day he thought to himself, "Okay, how does the king fisher, a type of bird, dive into the water without making a splash nor a noise?" The answer is because of the aerodynamic shape of its beak, which optimizes the pressure gradient and reduces the aerodynamic drag. They

redesigned the train to look like the king fisher's beak. And voila, the noise was reduced, the train became 10% faster, and it was also 30% more energy efficient. Our journey continues with a ship. But not just any ship. A ship inspired by the scariest marine predator, the shark. If you zoom in on shark skin, you would see these toothlike shaped scales called dermal dentricles. They their shape is very specific. They have these channels which guide the water in one direction. Thus generating streamwise vortices which are basically little whirlpools in the water which optimize turbulent and optimize the they also optimize the pressure gradient and they reduce the hydrodnamic drag. Scientists got inspired by that and they created a special covering for the ships. The ships became 11% faster.

The fuel per voyage was also reduced by thousands of liters and it also stopped bofouling because barnacles and other microorganisms stopped sticking to the ho of the ships. They also got inspired from that in other spheres like sports and the technology got so successful that they had to ban it. But I'll tell you about that another time. And that's our journey from king fisher to shark. Two animals, two genius ideas, one big lesson. Nature has already done it all. And all we have to do is just pay attention. We have to stop, observe, analyze, and take inspiration from it.

And that's my time. I'm going to be late. The next genius engineer is waiting for me on my starboard. Last time I left him unsupervised. He actually tried to attach octopus tentacles for to the coffee machine for better grip. Could you imagine? Thank you.

Thank you so much, Jesse. Um, Cla, I'll come straight to you. Thank you. Um, so what is what is a problem that you see in uh the world that you uh would like to be solved with uh something some inspiration from nature? Well actually as you know pollution and climate change those are very big problems and I think we can take inspiration from nature to fix that because nature has been evolving for about 3.8 billion years and that's a lot of more experience than we humans have. So instead of trying to reinvent the wheel we can actually stop and look at at nature and see how they've done it.

Thank you Cararissa please. So, if I understood correctly, you studied in Antarctica or have connections with Antarctica?

Uh, no. I studied to become a navigator at the Naval Academy in Varna. Great. Okay. So, given that we discussed Antarctica and the ships, what do you think we could learn if you were able to go there and study the wildlife there given such extreme situations? Well, you can learn a lot like as I said about climate change. You can also study the radiology there and uh the ice. You can melt it and see what microorganism they've existed there. Antarctica is like such an um unexplored area and I think uh that we should really explore it. Go there and just take inspiration from everything in there.

Thank you so much Desi. Thank you so much judges. Round of applause. Thank you.

We got to the end. That's it. Yeah, we did it. So, maybe we should recap. Yes. Okay. So, let's do uh all nine talks. So, Georgia Franchesca from Italy with flashes in the dark room restoring blurred memories.

Zane from Switzerland with guardians of the forest with poop power. Uh Naomi from Germany with how light brightens tiny particles superpowers.

Christina from the Czech Republic with the silent seasoning. Luther from South Africa with turning data into dinner.

Spatika from the United Kingdom. Why brains matter. Tammy from Australia with atypical embryo.

Natalia from Poland with better batteries built from Lego bricks. And Desessie from Bulgaria with biomimicry. Nature is the ultimate inventor. A huge round of applause, please, for all of our amazing amazing finalists.

It's now time for you judges to seen it all. It's time for you to retreat, discuss, debate, fight, and you have to come back with two runner-ups and one Fame Lab International winner 2025.

Off you pop. Go on. Good luck. Don't know how you're going to do this because that was a phenomenal final.

Yeah. Uh, and don't you lot watching, anyone sat here, anyone at home, we just need you for another couple of minutes because there is another title up for grabs. Remember that is the Fame Lab International audience favorite 2025. You are the judges.

Yeah. The power is now in your hands. So, while the judges deliberate, we're going to give you time to vote. They normally take around about 15 minutes or so. Uh, so the audience vote is now

open. Officially open. It's officially open. The QR code to cast your vote. You can visit the website slido.com and enter #li25 for famelab international 25 or easier scan the QR code just behind me. And for those watching online, you can still scan the same QR code on your screen and click on the link in the chat. So, while you vote and the judges deliberate, we've got some special guests replacing us on stage here.

Some special guys. Uh they they start their journey like the particles that turn into a lin a linear accelerator. They are called the Lin actors and they are the CERN dramatic arts club with their own personal interpretation of what Fame Lab is all about. I leave the floor to them and see you after. [snorts]

Hello, good night. It's so nice to be here which is great audience. Hello Fame Lab 2025.

Yeah. And uh well infame lab 2025 now that's what is starting now. This is infame lab.

Yeah we we are also scientists and engineers. Yeah and engineers. Yeah software developers.

Yeah software developers sometimes operators. Well we have presentations to bring to you as well. Um you you guys uh brought your props.

You were supposed to I don't have any notes. I didn't prepare anything. Oh we have I think we have to make stuff up. Oh,

we we can make up anything. I mean, all we need is to have well good topics. Um, we we we can ask the audience.

Let's ask the audience. So, true. Let's do the following. I ask you to think about a scientific field that you really like. Huh?

Like physics, chemistry, super general. Like, let's count to five or on five you all shot at the same time a scientific topic that you like. All right. 1 2 3 4 5

Whoa. LOTS OF STUFF. OKAY. WAIT, WAIT, WAIT. In these scientific fields, a topic that fascinates you.

All right. Wait, let me count to five. I went to school. I know how to count. One, two, three, four, five.

Oh my god. I got one. Need some individually. A Pokemon. Oh, yeah. The I've got one.

Particles. Very good. Particles. More stuff. Black holes. Okay. I've got a topic.

I got a topic. I heard. Okay. Okay. Uh, who wants to start? I I can start. Fantastic. Yeah. I mean, we can help you out.

Yes, you can be my props. Yeah, sure. More slides. All right. Yeah. Yeah, I can count on you. I know. [snorts]

So, I heard chaos theory. Chaos. We all dread it whether we are politicians or people living their daily lives. You know, for physicists, chaos is a very special thing. There are some systems which we cannot really predict like you can see here. There's for example double pendulums and non stoastic systems and this is pretty hard for physicists to tackle. Now

I don't know what this is. It's a chaotic system. It's chaos on stage. Now you all have heard about the butterfly effect. Fun fact, World War I was caused by someone sneezing in the general direction of a butterfly and that butterfly provoking inadvertently uh the beginning of World War I. Now butterflies, we can see them here flying through the stage so innocently. They look so beautiful, so gracious. Yet a butterfly flapping their wings here can trigger an earthquake IN THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD. Now our research showed that in fact chaos is really originated by butterflies. Butterflies are a secret agents of chaos as you can see here.

They plot cunningly to derail our lives. And therefore, we have been researching a process to tame butterflies. So, we have butterfly coaches that get in contact with butterflies.

Hello. Yeah. Hello. And you need more local chaos. Oh, yeah. Sorry, my bad. Through coaching we uh coaching and genetic engineering uh we can make them flap their wings in a precise way that is not so dreadful for us.

Double the frequency. Yeah. Oh sorry. Yeah. We call the trainers motivational speakers.

More jive because they transform them into moths. Now the result of our research led to a product where we have gracious butterflies that are well behaved behaved and we call them better flies. Thank you very much.

Okay. Uh I have a question actually. Um so did the patterns on the butterflyy's wings have anything to do with this chaos motion?

Yes. Uh we are training with AI actually some of the participants are helping us uh with their research. Uh we are um uh researching and patenting of course we want to make money out of this

uh better uh movement pattern for butterflies. Yes. Very good. Any anyone has another presentation?

Yeah I have. Oh yeah sure. Go ahead. Go for it. We help you bro. [snorts] So um thank you and welcome all to our uh particle beam accelerator here. Um I would like to so as much as we like to put the fun in fundamental science, we also like to give back to society things that are actually useful. Let me introduce you to tachon beans. Here we see a typical situation in the office where you want to kind of stick things to other things. Let's say you want to hang a clock above your toilet or you throw just ideas at the wall and nothing really sticks.

Now, our scientists in our lab are hardly at work to accelerate fundamental particles such as gluons to ludicrous speeds with our state-of-the-art lab acquirement.

OH, HE'S GOING. HE'S GOING. PERFECT. [clears throat] Now with this cutting edge clling on technology we are working hardly to kind of put this into a pro product which we call the tachonator. This will help you stack your ideas to anything faster than light. You will be done with your projects faster than 12 parex.

Tak. Thank you very much. Tak off. Takon. Very good. I um Oh, no question. Just presentation.

Uh yeah. Um how do you undo this? Oh [snorts] um you just pry it off. You use a glue off instead of a glue on.

Glue on. Glue off. scientist. [snorts] Very good. Uh may I go? Yes, of course. Course.

I heard black holes from over here. So, black holes do an incredible thing where if you have two black holes, uh they can actually rotate uh between uh uh around each other. They're spinning. They spin faster and faster uh until they merge into one. And when they do so, they they chirp. And the wave of this chirp uh travels through gravity until it gets measured by our interpherometer uh which is Yes, exactly. Actually, let's zoom in a little bit into this interferometer. An interrotor is a laser beam made of two arms which are perpendicular at 90° and you have mirrors which uh uh which reflects the lasers back. And so you know a a gravity wave from this end will w this one and a gravity wave from this one wble this one and you see the difference [snorts] between the two lasers. That's in parametry. Uh oh that was too much science. We're talking nonsense. Uh let's have some nonsense. Uh so, uh

let's reset this. Um instead of the intererometer, something a little bit more closer to home, we could have the interometer. So, if you are a nosy neighbor at home, maybe you could have your own local interferometer, which could measure local collisions around your neighborhood. For example, if your neighbor crashes his car into a garage,

your nosy neighbor's interferometer would pick up these signals. I'm calling the cops.

Or maybe if there's a little scuffle outside the local pub. I'm still calling the cops. And and and the great thing is that interpherometers can be combined with uh with telescopes and even nutrino detectors to get a cohesive picture of the moment which you can see here with our nosy neighbors neutrino detector and of course trusty binoculars.

I cannot see anything but I'm sure it's crossing me right now. Thank you very much.

So wait, we need all presentations, but we need we don't the judges are done. Are

you finished? Are you finished? Well, we would like to have the public voting for which presentation they like the most.

Okay, let's let's vote. Let's vote. So, intererometer or the butterfly effect. So, who votes for the interferometer? Applaud now.

Wow. I think it's a Who votes for takons? Applaud now. And who votes for Chaos Theory? Applaud now.

I don't know who was the winner. Everybody wins. I have a trophy. All right. Let's share it. Let's share it together. Yeah.

The judges are coming. Of course, for a photo. This is No, the judges are not coming yet, but you're going definitely.

All right. So, I don't get the photo. Thank you. The third dramatic left. That was fun. So the judges are not done yet. I just wanted to remind people are voting online. If you you can zoom in in the in the QR code uh to vote online if you have difficulties. While the judges are still deliberating, we are going to watch a video from CERN alumna who uh after doing a PhD after doing science communications she turned into a businesswoman and she created a startup called Terrapet. And this is something maybe some of our finalists can think about in the future to become investors and to go into business once uh and where communication is also very important. Let's watch this video.

[snorts] My name is Christina. I'm the CEO and the co-founder of Terrapet. Before founding Terrapet, I have been working as a physicist at SE for the last 12 years. Terrapet is a Geneva based met company. We are developing next generation nuclear imaging technology to accelerate imageguided therapies and advanced precision medicine. At Terrapet, I often have to explain complex detector technologies to very different audience. Our employees, researchers clinicians investors regulatory bodies. Good science is not enough. You need to explain complex things in simple words. People must understand why it matters. Clear communications builds trust and innovation only works if people believe in it. I would advise a young science communicator. Craft a pitch where you open with a compelling human problem.

Explain in clear terms how your solution addresses. Demonstrate credibility without overwhelming with details and end by telling the listener exactly what you want them to do and practice until your delivery is confident. I wish all the best to the fan love finalist. Thanks uh to the CERN alumni for this video. I think I'm afraid we're not done yet.

Not done just yet. They're still bickering. So, so we can we can um u fill the time with more challenges. Actually, this autumn the my colleagues at CERN in social media launched an online campaign inspired by Fame Lab asking participants remotely to produce and upload a short video explaining something related to particle physics and to CERN. And uh they judged 20 videos that uh among those which came 20 videos that were were like qualifying for the three criterias of fame lab content clarity and charisma. They were ranked by a group of physicists and um all these 20 participants will get to visit CERN.

[snorts] So we'll have this exciting opportunity and two of them uh will receive a special prize uh particle detector that you can build yourself and see particles with your own eyes. It's called a cloud chamber and here we teach how to build cloud chambers to everyone.

Very cool. I've got the names of the two winners. Should I announce them? Yes, please.

Okay. So, winner number one, uh this was of this uh this CERN science outreach online before you lot go. Is it us? Is it us?

No, no, it's not. So, number one, uh Mahad Matashim from Pakistan. Well done. And also Tiana Dona from Bulgaria. Should we have a

we watch? Let's have a quick look at their winning video submissions. Yeah. As I sit here soaking up the winter sun, billions of tiny particles are going through me right now. Clearly, they're harmless, but they might be one of the most polite particles we know. These particles are called neutrinos. Nutrinos going through me right now were created by the sun's fusion reactions and in massive numbers. Every second, the sun creates more nutrinos than there are grains of sand on Earth. But why are they important? Nutrinos carry messages from across the universe. Not only do they originate from the sun, but from distant exploding stars and perhaps the early moments of the big bang. Just like ice cream, nutrinos come in three delicious flavors. The electron neutrino, the mu1 nutrino, and the tow nutrino. These nutrinos can also be seen here in the standard model of particle physics. The fundamental building blocks

of our universe. Because of the incredibly small masses, nutrinos exhibit a property called nutrino oscillation in which nutrinos can switch flavors when they're traveling. So for example, a chocolate electronutrino originating from the sun can come to earth as a strawberry muon neutrino. In an experiment, CERN sent a muon neutrino beam to a detector in the Grand Sasu facility in Italy to detect down nutrinos. This invisible beam traveled 730 km through the earth's crust. And like the cosmic chameleon it is, it transitioned from a muon nutrino to a town nutrino with strong confidence in its detection. It's experiments like these which allow us to unravel the mysteries of the universe and decrypt the messages which are hidden in ancient and distant nutrinos. So next time when you're getting your vitamin D, remember that the universe quietly flows through you as tiny polite neutrinos.

This is a hydrogen proton or at least imagine it is. So how can you make something this small travel near the speed of light? Well, one way to understand it is with this rocket. In CERN's large hard colliders, particles don't get one huge push. They travel in bunches and each bunch receives many small pushes inside devices called radio frequency cavities. An RF cavity is a metallic chamber containing an electromagnetic field that oscillates extremely fast, flicking directions millions of times per second. If proton bunch passes at the right instant, the field gives it a little electric impulse. If it passes at the wrong time, it gets almost nothing. And that's why timing is everything. If I swing too early or too late, this proto hardly moves. RF cavities work the same way.

Their oscillation is synchronized with the bunches circulating around the OC. So, the electric field points in the right direction exactly when each punch arrives. Each pass through cavity gives the bunch a bit more energy. Now, for something especially important, the cavity's shape. The cavity isn't just a metal tube. Its shape is carefully engineered so the electromagnetic field forms in just the right way. That shape determines the cavity's frequency and how strongly the field can build up along the path the protons travel, letting it give each bunch an efficient push. As the protons loop again and again around the LHC's 27 km ring, guided by superconducting magnets and traveling through an ultra high vacuum, these tiny pushes gradually add up.

After many laps, the protons reach such high energy that they move extremely close to the speed of light, leading to nearly a billion particle collisions every second. Magnets steer them. Vacuum clears the way and cavities give the push together. Those tiny time kicks bring protons to incredible speeds. So our proton, this shot of doesn't need one massive swing. It just needs the right push at the right moment.

Very well done. Amazing. Very, very well done. judges not there yet. Uh I've just got to note that the judges are pretty much done.

So they're going to be on their way back up. So I'm just going to squeeze one more video in while we get them settled. So um we've mentioned Chelton Festivals a few times uh to you know for everyone here for everyone watching online. Not only do the amazing teams at Chelton Festivals run Fame Lab this uh they also produce inclusive festivals and projects focusing on music on science and the spoken and written words so that everyone can experience the benefits of cultural engagement and explore or advance their career in science uh and the arts. Now Chelton Festivals wants to see a world in which everyone can explore and create culture. Let's take a little look at that in action.

us. Quick. Yes, that's us. Quick. Didn't see anything while I edited it out. It's not live. Oh, we're live. Um, right. Hi, judges. Come on stage. Are you all right?

No. No blows. We're all kind of good. Okay great. All right. Yes, you need one quick thing to say though. The judges are back, which means that the audience vote is closed.

Yes. Over. The team's going to tally up your audience votes right now. Uh they'll get back to us with the results of those. Welcome back, judges. Um I hope it was all right. Do you have two runners up, one winner?

We do. Don't say anything. Don't say anything. Before we have to create a little bit of suspense before before we start giving names out, I would like to ask our head judge Ulia something about the process. The process you've been going through. Has it been painful?

That was so much harder. We also we would have prepared to prefer to be on stage actually because everyone was amazing and was incredibly hard.

Okay, Claire, do you want to say a few words about our first joint runner up? without saying the name, we're going to say the name with some special music.

Absolutely. Um so first of all, congratulations to everybody. Uh it was really really fun to watch. Um so our first joint runner up uh is someone that we chose uh for her amazing storytelling ability. She took us on a journey of her research which was not only uh interesting but also very very topical. Um and uh we what we particularly liked about her was that she was a master of voice modulation and she grabbed our attention from the start.

So we are ready to reveal the name of the first joint runner up. Should we get Should we get them all up on stage first? Let's get all the finalists. Come and join us on stage. Come up these steps here.

All the finalists at once. Come on. Sweet. You're all winners anyway. You're all winners. Come up. These ones here will be your quickest.

That side. That side. Come on up. Come on up. Yeah. Then you're all here for the big announcements. Come on up. Yeah. Stand with me on this side. Silence across the room.

Right. Silence across the room. Okay. Are we ready? Let's go for the first one.

Are we ready to go? So, the first joint runner up of Fame Lab 2025. I need the help of our technical team here to play the music. Yes. We can say the name now.

Congratulations. Congratulations from the United Kingdom. Spat stood near me as well. Here comes your trophy.

UK. Come join Come join me in the middle quickly. How do you feel hearing this announcement?

Great. You got the attention. We got the attention. You got the attention. You captured our attention.

Love the seat belt. Nice, simple, clear. Thank you. Is science communication in your future, do you think?

If I don't end up becoming an indentured academic, you can still do psychom alongside academia. Please, please do. Please do. Uh congratulations Vatica.

Okay, stay with me. So, let's now give out couple of hints, Karesa, about our second joint runner up before revealing the name.

Again, this was a very hard decision. Congratulations to all the finalists for such a fantastic job. Um, this other runner up that we chose, we chose in specific because of their incredible use of props and their continued use that really took us through their story. Um, which only added to their fantastic onstage presence. This person had a great sense of not only the global knowledge of their field, uh, but also sort of the consequences of their research and taught us an important lesson about how we can find discoveries in unique places. You can certainly say this runnerup made the best of a shitty situation. Uh-huh. Okay.

So, we can definitely play the music and say the name. The second joint runner up of Fame Lab 2035 is Congratulations to Sai from Switzerland.

Say, come on over. Come on over. Congratulations. It's you. How do you feel about that? Well, I feel grateful because you like my shitty talk and I hope you think about it when you

Don't know how to follow that up. Can I just ask um when you're doing that research, how you said how long during the day you're picking up poo for, but what's the like how many days, weeks, months, and have you finished?

Um you mean like how long I follow them? Yeah. Um, it took like one and a half years to see like how they spend each day and of course how many times they poop

and to see like how it is connected to their um ecosystem in the rainforest. Have you picked up enough now?

Yeah. Well, I will sort it out because you know like these are all those you know like plants from the rainforest that actually grew from their natural fertilizer. So if I want to get more then I need more of the poops. Never enough poo. Thank you so much. Big round of applause.

So, we're not ready yet for the final winner's name. We've got now we reveal the another winner. Yes.

Yes. Okay. All right. So, it's time. This is me living my Eurovvision moment. All right. With far too many devices and messages coming in. So, the votes have been counted. I'm delighted to announce the finalist with the most votes and your audience winner of Fame Lab International 2025 moves to a different app is Natalia from Poland with better batteries built from Lego bricks.

This is for you. This is for you. Thank you so much. Congratul How do you feel? You're the audience's champion. I feel like receiving a Grammy or an Oscar. It's like equivalent of that.

Maybe they all just want their magnesium powered devices and they're like, "Well, maybe if we give her the award, we'll get there quicker."

Yeah. Let's hope that we all drive magnesium powered G-Class one day. What's the timeline on that, do you think?

I hope uh as I live as I live, it will be here. Well, thank you so much. Keep doing the research and keep inspiring people with your passionate psychology.

Thank you so much. Thank you for the votes. Thank you so much. Awesome. Well done. Well done. Let's get closer. We can come closer. We have to be closer now for the very moment we've all been waiting for. It's time to find out who the judges have crowned. Fame Lab International Champion 2025. So, Julia, to you the hard task of giving us a few hints without revealing the name as yet.

Yeah. So the presentation that impressed us most used very simple props but in an excellent analogy and uh made it really clear how this research project advances the field and impacts society. So this year's fame lab international winner is

Tammy from Australia. Congratulations. Take your trophy. Come and join me. You take this as well.

That's a shocked face right there. How you feeling? OH MY GOD. So Tammy, are you happy you took that flight in the end? She was supposed to to take part by Zoom.

Yeah. 3 weeks ago it was like, "Oh, go on then. I'll come on over." Wow. It's also 2 or 3 in the morning for you right now.

That's right. I'm really tired. Well, it was totally worth it. Huge, huge congratulations.

Wow. Thank you so much. So, they absolutely loved it. Um, what's next for you? So, you still doing you still working in the the in the fertility lab? What's the duration of that lab?

So, majority of my time is working in the lab. So, I am a part-time PhD student. So, yes, I would love to do more research after I finish my PhD. So, yeah, we were all embryos one day. And yeah, I just want to say embryos are awesome.

Congratulations. Huge congratulations. Brilliant. Brilliant talk. Thank you so much. One huge round of all also.

Can I just say uh a huge massive well done and congrat congratulations to all of the finests who are on stage. I mean look, it's a huge huge thing you've done to represent uh your country here at the Fab International Final. I mean, we can't wait to see what each and every single one of you gets up into your future. Please be very very proud of yourselves. That was an incredible incredible final. It really was. Uh remember that now and always you will be part of the Fame Lab uh family. So welcome. Huge round of applause.

It's time for a few words of thanks. We would like to thank our judges, Julia Voy, Karisa Cheserati, and Claire Lee. Thank you really for your hard work and for making this event worth it. Thank you to the host country organizations all around Europe and the world. Fame Lab could not have happened without the national finals.

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks to the Chesnham festivals who work tirelessly till this moment to keep the Fame Lab flame alive.

Uh thank you all to the brilliant team here at CERN Science Gateway for hosting us and for live broadcasting this on YouTube. I hope everyone watching on YouTube has enjoyed it. Uh thank you audience here at CERN, everyone around the world. I know there's people watching from so many different countries. Uh remember you can share this with your families and friends. You can watch this back on the Chelenham Festival's Fame Lab YouTube channel. Um one more person to thank and of course that is Paula. Thank you so much for coming and one more. That's Greg. Thank you Greg. It's been an amazing adventure.

Absolutely pleasure. Safe our journeys to everyone and see you next year. Goodbye.

Bye. Well done. Stay here for a photo. All right. Have we taken a photo yet? Let's do a big photo.

Yes. That's the live stream done. Oh, thanks everyone in the room. We really appreciate you coming out and watching it. Hope you had a good night. Thanks so much.

Voila. Down. Hey. Hey. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Three, two one.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "FameLab International Final 2025"?

Greg Foot (Host), Pa Catapano (Host).

What is discussed in "FameLab International Final 2025"?

In order: 0:00 Fame Lab, Greg Foot, CERN, TEDx; 10:00 Fame Lab, Greg Foot, CERN, Carissa Chzerati; 20:00 Georgia Franchesca, Fame Lab; 30:00 Naomi Vitzel, Fame Lab, Han Lee; 40:00 Fame Lab, Carissa Chzerati, Claire Lee, Julia Voyte; 50:00 Fame Lab, Luther Chip, Christina Scooper, Georgia Franchesca; 1:00:00 Fame Lab, Tammy Lee; 1:10:00 Fame Lab, Desi Musinska, Natalia Deepska; 1:20:00 Fame Lab, Georgia Franchesca; 1:30:00 Fame Lab; 1:40:00 Fame Lab; 1:50:00 Fame Lab, Pa Catapano, Claire Lee.

What is mentioned in this CERN episode?

22 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Fame Lab, Greg Foot, Pa Catapano, CERN, Cheltenham Festivals, Claire Lee. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "FameLab International Final 2025"?

The episode runs 1 h 58 min; the transcript is about 16,930 words in 281 timestamped sections.

More from CERN

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.