Elsevier Foundation alumna Dr. Marwa Shumo brings science into the sanctuary with “Prayer for Flies”

Dr. Marwa Shumo, a 2023 Falling Walls Women’s Impact Awards winner supported by the Elsevier Foundation, has just concluded an interdisciplinary exhibition, “Prayer for Flies,” at the historic Sint Stevenskerk in Nijmegen, Netherlands.

Developed with the Dutch design collective Polymorf and running from January to April 2026 as part of the church’s Ver en Nabij exhibition, the installation placed Dr Shumo’s research in dialogue with the medieval works of the Van Lymborch brothers. It used scent, sound and 3D visualisation to reframe how visitors relate to “The Unwanted” – the Black Soldier Fly (Hermetia illucens). Dr Shumo worked with scent designer Saskia Wilson-Brown of the Institute for Art and Olfaction to engineer a bespoke perfume intended to draw humans and flies into closer chemical proximity, part of what the team calls “The Power of One Million”: a planned ritual set among a million living Black Soldier Flies. As Polymorf’s design research team put it, the aim is “a bigger, fully automated interactive performative ritual for meditation… where a user can participate in a spiritual experience from the perspective of ‘The Unwanted’.”

Dr. Shumo has recently started as Visiting Faculty Member in the Department of Biology, College of Science at Sultan Qaboos University in Muscat, Oman. She previously held a position as researcher at the Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn, where her work on the Black Soldier Fly has long focused on sustainable protein production and organic waste management – the same research recognised by her 2023 Falling Walls Women’s Impact Award.

We’re glad to see her science reach audiences in such an unexpected setting, and look forward to what she and Polymorf build next.