Visionary, high-risk, long-term and breaking down traditional boundaries. These are just some of the key ingredients in breakthrough technologies being targeted by FET researchers across Europe.

In January 2005, a severe storm swept across Northern Europe, from Ireland to Russia. More than 500,000 homes were left without power, with Denmark and Southern Sweden being particularly hard-hit.

The incidence of auto-immune diseases like type 1 diabetes and allergies has risen dramatically in developed countries over the past fifty years .

The so-called hygiene hypothesis claims young children need to get in contact with a number of relatively benign pathogens to develop a robust immune system .

Are allergies and so-called autoimmune diseases, like type 1 diabetes, likely to be caused by a lack of exposure to relatively benign pathogens in early childhood? This theory is referred to as the hygiene hypothesis.

Andre Konstantin Geim is the only person who ever received both a Nobel and an Ig Nobel . He was born in 1958 in Russia, and is a Dutch-British physicist with German, Polish, Jewish and Ukrainian roots.

Christophe Heyndrickx is bio engineer in environmental and agricultural economics at research consultancy Transport and Mobility, in Leuven, Belgium.  He specialises in modelling regional and national economic policy.

Most of the animal proteins found in the meat industry waste have, until now, been underutilised. The challenge is to transform such waste into food of higher functionality and added value .

When the premises of the American Civil War forced the textile mills of Mississippi to a virtual stop, and the Russian Empire started seeking new cotton suppliers for its huge domestic market, Ludwig Knoop had a brilliant idea.

“ At the end of last year, we were so overwhelmed that we had to start rejecting new membership demands .” Dirk Vansintjan is a board member of EcoPower , a Belgian renewable energy cooperative, founded in 1991.

“ Food production requires fertilisers and fertilisers require energy. If energy prices soar, fertilisers’ and food prices will soar too .

"To achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 we need more investments than those envisaged by the Green Deal , otherwise we will never make it.

In the mid-90s, when he was 9 to 12 years old, Tommy DeVoss broke into the computer systems of global fast-food and pharmaceutical companies. He also hacked into organisations such as the US government, the US military, and NASA .

With buyers facing unusually long delays between ordering and receiving new cars, car manufacturers are pivoting to make key components, including semiconductor chips and lithium-ion batteries .

The war in Ukraine is threatening to trigger a global world crisis and is highlighting the EU's dependence on mineral-based fertilizers , which are mainly produced by Russia.

To date we know very little about the specific circumstances and factors that might impact women’s involvement in the transition to clean energy .

Both European and Asian experts are focusing on the challenging tasks of system integration and transmission of renewable energy over long distances. High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) grid technologies could be the solution.