Award
Women’s Impact Awards
The Women’s Impact Award recognises women who combine outstanding research with societal impact. It celebrates scientific excellence with purpose—led by women and actively contributing to a more equitable future.
The award is a joint initiative by the Falling Walls Foundation and the Elsevier Foundation and forms part of the Falling Walls Global Call for Science Breakthroughs.
The 2026 call for applications is now closed.
2025 winners
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Ângela Gonçalves
Full Professor, Heidelberg University
Ângela Gonçalves originally trained in Computer Science at the University of Coimbra in Portugal, where she focused on the development of biologically inspired artificial intelligence algorithms. Following a research stay at the European Space Agency, she was awarded a fellowship to pursue a PhD in Computational Molecular Biology at the European Bioinformatics Institute, earning her doctorate from the University of Cambridge in 2012. During her PhD, she investigated the evolution of gene expression regulation during mammalian speciation and developed some of the earliest computational methods for RNA sequencing analysis.
She went on to conduct postdoctoral research in population genomics at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. In 2017, she received a pump-priming grant from the Cambridge Cancer Centre Early Detection Programme, initiating work on the use of menstrual fluid as a model system for tracking somatic mutations in normal tissues over time.
Since 2018, Ângela has led a joint wet- and dry-lab research group at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg. Her research focuses on modeling healthy aging and the evolution of somatic mutant clones in normal and pre-malignant tissues, with the goal of developing methods for cancer prevention and early detection. Since 2022, she has also served as co-lead of the Digital Cancer Prevention group at the National Cancer Prevention Center. Since 2024 she is full Professor at Heidelberg University.
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Colette Wabnitz
Research Associate, Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, University of British Columbia
Colette Wabnitz
Research Associate, Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, University of British Columbia
Colette Wabnitz is an interdisciplinary marine scientist. Her work explores how social-ecological systems respond to change and contributes to efforts toward more equitable and sustainable development in marine food systems. She works primarily in the Global South, collaborating closely with communities, researchers, governments, businesses, and other stakeholders to co-develop solutions that inform both science and policy. She holds research positions at Stanford University, the University of British Columbia, and the Stockholm Resilience Centre.
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Omneya Attallah
Professor, Arab Academy for Science, Technology, and Maritime Transport (AASTMT)
Omneya Attallah
Professor, Arab Academy for Science, Technology, and Maritime Transport (AASTMT)
Egypt
Omneya Attallah is a Professor of Biosignal Processing and Artificial Intelligence in Medicine and Healthcare at the Arab Academy for Science, Technology, and Maritime Transport (AASTMT) in Egypt. She is a founding member of the WeBios Lab, where her research focuses on developing intelligent systems for medical diagnosis and prognosis, long-term patient monitoring, assistive technologies, and stress management. She has been recognized among the top 2% of the world’s most influential scientists by the Stanford/Elsevier database (2022–2024) and ranked in the top 0.05% of global scholars according to the 2024 ScholarGPS rankings. Her awards include the Bioinformatics Sciences Award, the Best Presented Paper Award at the ICICM conference, and travel awards from IEEE and AWC. She has contributed to numerous nationally and internationally funded research projects. Omneya serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Computational Intelligence in Biomedicine and holds editorial roles in several prestigious journals. She is a Senior Member of IEEE and affiliated with several global scientific societies, including ACM and OWSD.
About the Awards
While women are well represented in early academic stages, they remain significantly underrepresented in senior leadership, decision-making roles, and high-visibility recognition.
The Women’s Impact Award recognises outstanding projects that advance gender equity and generate meaningful societal impact for women and girls.
Selection criteria
Career Level & Applicants
Applicants must be at postdoctoral level or above or hold an equivalent level of professional independence and responsibility. (Eligible examples: postdoctoral researchers, research fellows, senior researchers, principal investigators, group leaders, or professors). We welcome submissions from cis and trans women, genderqueer, and non-binary individuals, embracing an inclusive definition of women.
Nature of the Research Project
Applicants must be leading or substantially contributing to a research project that combines scientific excellence with real-world impact. The project must meet at least one of the following aims:
- The project addresses a gender-related topic and meaningfully integrates gender equality into its design and methodology and/or,
- The project enables and supports underserved or marginalized communities through how the research is designed and/or how its outcomes are applied.
Project Status & Language
- The research project must be actively running at the time of submission. Projects that are only at the idea stage, in proposal development, or seeking funding are not eligible.
- The language of the application must be English.
Who can nominate
- Universities and research institutions
- Companies with research laboratories
- Scientific foundations
- Partner organisations of Falling Walls
- Leading scientists in their field
