The best three projects of the Falling Walls Lab Competition, a platform for emerging researchers and entrepreneurs to showcase their innovative ideas, have been announced by the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation.

Out of the 20 participants that made their way to the final stage, the final three were chosen. The best one will get a chance to represent Oman at the Falling Walls Lab main event, in Berlin on November 8, the ministry stated.

The award for the best project went to Fatema Faham Said al Maqbali for her work titled ‘Breaking the Wall of costly desalination’.

Fatema’s project aimed at suggesting a solution to costly water desalination by utilising a microbial desalination cell as a pretreatment stage for a reverse osmosis plant.

It helps in reducing the reverse osmosis load, save energy, pressure and membrane life during wastewater treatment.

Faris Abdullah Hamed al Farsi’s project, titled ‘Breaking the wall of hospital acquired infection’, got the second place.

It was based on making a filter using nanotechnology that prevents the entry of bacteria that causes urinary tract infection among hospitalised patients.

Khawla Ali Hamdan al Aamri’s project – ‘Breaking the wall of muscular activity measurement’ – received the award for being the third best project.

Khawla’s project developed a smart band with two types of sensors to calculate the water and food consumption. The sensors used vibration of the consumed water and food, as well as measuring the muscles activity fatigue and the timing for recovering these muscles.

This band can be used by sports practitioners, and can also be used for medical research specialists and physical therapy. 

The 20 finalists of the Falling Walls Lab Competition, who have been selected out of the 54 who applied for the competition this year, presented their research projects and business models, varying across different disciplines, in a duration of three minutes each.

Due to the current situation with the COVID-19 pandemic, all the contestants presented their projects online, before a competition jury which comprised Abdullah Hilal al Balushi, Dr Jamilla al Hinai, Dr Maya al Azri, Dr Tariq Mohiuddin Ghulam and Dr Majid Khamis al Salmani.

The Falling Walls Lab competition, which was organised by the ministry for the sixth consecutive year, in collaboration with Falling Walls Foundation in Germany, aims at boosting innovative ideas and business models among researchers and entrepreneurs across different fields.