Falling Walls Foundation & Elsevier Foundation Name Three Winners of the Women’s Impact Award

Berlin, Germany, 13 August 2026. The Falling Walls Foundation and its partner organisation Elsevier Foundation proudly announce the three winners of this year’s Women’s Impact Award (WIA). According to a distinguished jury, the three selected projects show outstanding promise in advancing gender equality and supporting underserved communities. The Falling Walls Foundation lauds the efforts of all the initial 159 applications from all over the world and extends its appreciation to all ten recently announced Finalists. The three winners are invited to present their projects to an international audience during the Falling Walls Science Summit 2026. One of the winners will be honoured with the title Science Breakthrough of the Year 2026 and will present her work on the grand Falling Walls stage on 9 November.

The 2026 WIA winners are:

Amelia Fiske
Technical University of Munich, DE

Breaking the Wall of Algorithmic Injustice
“Artificial Intelligence (AI) comes with great promises, but more critically, it comes with demonstrated harms, from racial and gender bias, wrongful arrests, defamation, surveillance, or the extractive labor and practices required for its creation. This project aims to break the wall of algorithmic injustice by centering the experiences of marginalized communities and develops interventions into AI concerns that are designed by and for those communities.
To do so, this project develops the novel approach of participatory algorithmic justice. Participatory algorithmic justice defines a concept and standards of practice for collaborative research to better understand who and what AI harms, and how these harms should be redressed. The project investigates how economic, cultural, and political harms from AI are experienced by structurally marginalized groups through multi-sited, intersectional ethnographic fieldwork on substantially different domains of AI around the world: environmental sustainability in Germany and the UK, global health in Zimbabwe, judicial systems in Colombia, and digital labor in India. This fieldwork informs participatory design workshops to develop specific interventions into problems identified by research collaborators.
Participatory algorithmic justice brings the voices, priorities, and concerns of those affected by AI to the forefront of debates over what kinds of AI people want to live with. Tackling a critical problem of global technology justice, this project is a crucial intervention for communities, researchers, and developers to redress AI harms.”

– Amelia Fiske


Manali Mukherjee
McMaster University, CA

Breaking the Wall of Long COVID Denial
“Denial around Long COVID is the wall my research program seeks to break. Denial does not mean that no research has been done. There have been many studies, substantial investment, and numerous clinical trials. Denial occurs when that activity does not translate into meaningful answers or care for patients and when the continued absence of clear tests and effective treatments is mistaken for evidence that the illness is not real.There is now a “fatigue” around Long COVID: funding fatigue, research fatigue, and public fatigue. But the only fatigue that should matter is the debilitating fatigue experienced by patients whose days are cut short, whose ability to work is lost, and whose time with their children and families is diminished. Many remain unwell despite years of research, while trials often fail to produce clear benefits because Long COVID is not one disease, and patients are too often treated as though they are biologically the same.My research addresses this problem through biomarkers. We need to understand the biology well enough to select the right patient for the right therapy and measure the right outcome. The right outcome is especially important in Long COVID because illness is heterogeneous. One person may be limited by breathlessness after walking quickly or climbing a flight of stairs; another may have short-term memory loss or declining executive function. They may not need the same therapeutic strategy, and a treatment that improves one outcome may not improve another.
Some patients may also be on the precipice of a defined autoimmune disease. Identifying immune signatures that signal this risk could enable closer monitoring, earlier specialist assessment, and timely consideration of appropriate treatment. My program seeks to move Long COVID care away from one-size-fits-all trials and toward precision medicine, where patients are believed, biologically characterised, and offered care that matches the illness they are experiencing. That is the “invisible” yet menacing wall my research and my institute are trying to break.”

– Manali Mukherjee


Anam Shahil-Feroz
University of Western Ontario, CA

Breaking the Wall of Preeclampsia Care with Remote Monitoring
“My research seeks to break the wall of inequitable access to life-saving maternal care for pregnant individuals at high risk of preeclampsia. Despite advances in maternal healthcare, preventable maternal deaths and complications remain disproportionately high among underserved populations, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. In Pakistan, many pregnant individuals face gender-based and structural barriers that limit their ability to access timely antenatal care, including restricted mobility, limited decision-making power, financial constraints, and dependence on family members for healthcare access. These barriers are especially dangerous in high-risk pregnancies, where early detection and timely management of complications such as preeclampsia can save lives.The wall is not only a lack of healthcare resources—it is a system that often requires pregnant individuals to overcome significant social, economic, and geographic barriers before receiving care. For many living in underserved communities, reaching a healthcare facility requires long travel, financial costs, and support from family members. As a result, symptoms may be recognized too late, and opportunities for early intervention may be missed.My research breaks this wall through Raabta, a culturally tailored, mobile-based telemonitoring program designed to bring essential elements of high-risk pregnancy care closer to individuals’ homes. Raabta enables pregnant individuals to monitor their blood pressure and symptoms using a mobile application while allowing healthcare providers to remotely review information and support timely clinical decision-making. By shifting care from a facility-dependent model to continuous, home-based monitoring, Raabta reduces barriers created by distance, limited mobility, and unequal access to healthcare services.Importantly, Raabta was not developed as a technology imposed on communities; it was co-designed with the people it aims to serve. Pregnant individuals, caregivers, and healthcare providers were engaged throughout the research process to ensure that the intervention reflected their realities, needs, and preferences. The program incorporates Urdu-language interfaces, simplified visual features, traffic-light risk alerts, and voice-based notifications to support individuals with varying levels of health and digital literacy.Breaking this wall is about more than introducing a digital health tool. It is about transforming maternal healthcare into a more equitable, accessible, and responsive system where every pregnant individual—regardless of geography, socioeconomic status, or social circumstances—has the opportunity for a safe pregnancy. Through Raabta, my research aims to empower underserved pregnant individuals, strengthen self-care agency, and contribute to a future where preventable maternal complications are identified earlier and managed more effectively.”

– Anam Shahil-Feroz

Interviews with the WIA winners can be requested at press@falling-walls.com.