From 7–9 November 2025, the Falling Walls Science Summit took place in Berlin. The 9th of November holds deep significance in German history. On this date in 1938, the November pogroms (Kristallnacht) marked a disastrous turning point in Nazi Germany’s persecution of Jews. Fifty-one years later, in 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. A peaceful revolution that symbolized the end of division between East and West Berlin and the beginning of the reunification of Germany. Against this backdrop, the Falling Walls Science Summit asks each year: Which walls will fall next?

As members of the Young Academy Leiden, we travelled to Berlin to learn from policy makers, politicians, entrepreneurs, journalists, science funders, and scientists (from across disciplines, including the physical sciences and life sciences, engineering, technology, social sciences, humanities, and the arts). It was a unique opportunity for us to engage in conversations with people we would not normally meet at our regular disciplinary conferences. We attended Plenary Tables, Round Tables, Impact Dialogues and Symposia. Parts of the programme, such as the Executive Tables, were by invitation only. A welcome change of pace were the Falling Walls Pitches: competitive, jury-judged pitches in the Emerging Talents (Falling Walls Lab) and Science Start-Ups (Falling Walls Venture) tracks, designed to give ideas and start-ups visibility and connect them with investors and other funders. In this blog, we reflect on the walls we hope to see fall next and on the role that early-career researchers can play in breaking them down and building something better in their place.

Breaking the Wall that Separates Scientists

A big theme at the science summit was the future of transatlantic science relations. Speakers from Europe, Canada and the United States discussed how to sustain scientific collaboration in times of geopolitical turbulence. Persistent budget and policy uncertainty in the United States is already being felt worldwide. Because the United States has historically dominated research funding, publications, top-tier academic jobs, resources, and data infrastructures, its current pullback is reverberating across the global research system. Targeted funding threats on U.S. universities weaken the scientific community as a whole: a lose-lose scenario for everyone. Early-career researchers are especially vulnerable as opportunities and funding streams become scarcer. At the same time continued implementation of budget cuts in Europe, rising inward-looking politics, and the fragmentation of international research ecosystems further threaten transatlantic collaborations.

Amid these challenges, there are also positive developments. Scientific ties between Canada and Europe continue to strengthen, illustrated by Canada’s inclusion in Horizon Europe. Furthermore, the European Union has announced plans to significantly increase its science budget in 2027 and the European Research Council added the ERC Plus Grants, open for researchers anywhere in the world to do transformative high-risk research in Europe. Initiatives like the Global Minds Initiative Germany (a program to attract international talent, similar to NWO Tulp Fonds in the Netherlands) demonstrate that science can still be a vehicle for solidarity and mobility, although there are also concerns that the funds focus too much on excellence.

In this fragmented landscape, staying connected as scientists is vital. Many sessions at the summit highlighted the importance of scientific diplomacy: partnerships that endure even when politics falters, complementarity between regions that compensate for each other’s blind spots. A prime example is given by SESAME, a synchrotron (a particle accelerator that produces intense beams of light) hosted by Jordan that is accessible for researchers from countries that otherwise would face severe difficulties in getting VISA approved for doing their experiments. Furthermore, scientific solidarity means resisting self-censorship in anticipation of U.S. political trends or fears of losing American collaborations. Early-career researchers can play a key role by actively filling the research gaps that scientists with less (academic) freedom can no longer pursue and thereby helping maintain global continuity on shared scientific challenges. In short: breaking the wall that separates scientists asks for connected and complementary science.

Breaking the Wall of Constrained Scholarship

A related theme across multiple sessions was the current threats to academic freedom and democracy. Both academic freedom and democratic rights can feel like abstract concepts. In the Netherlands, a growing number of signals and recent reports suggest that academic freedom is under pressure, as synthesised in a KNAW’s 2025 report. Examples are how steering in research funding leaves limited room for curiosity-driven work, proposed interventions in universities’ autonomy (such as the recently reversed plan to add language requirements for bachelor’s programmes), and through knowledge-security measures that may constrain researchers’ freedom to choose international collaborators. Professor Maria Leptin (president of the European Research Council) highlighted two other threats to academic freedom. First, bureaucratic hurdles slow down scientists and thereby reduce their freedom. Second, a narrow focus on short-term, quantifiable “impact” restricts the space for fundamental and long-term inquiry. When researchers feel compelled to align their questions with political priorities, funding fashions, or external expectations, science risks losing the creativity that makes transformative discoveries possible.

The consequences are far-reaching. In a system that rewards immediate output, researchers become less willing to take risks. Curiosity, interdisciplinarity, and unconventional ideas fade into the background. At the same time, rising political polarization and authoritarian tendencies threaten scientific autonomy. Without active defence, the space for open inquiry shrinks quickly. Practical advice came from colleagues from the United States. Europe needs to act now and invest in relationships with societal allies (for example in industry) and explore ways to diversify funding streams in order to become less dependent on governments.

In the Impact Dialogue sessions, Marc Abrahams (founder of the Ig Nobel Prize) encouraged early-career researchers to stay curious and take risks. He highlighted the scientific value of playfulness, experimentation and surprise — elements often lost in tightly controlled academic systems. The Ig Nobel Prize, which rewards research that first makes people laugh and then think, has a long history of anticipating scientific breakthroughs.

Ultimately, when freedom and creativity are constrained, not only is science weakened, but society loses its capacity to advance. Transformative knowledge cannot flourish under rigid conditions; besides sufficient funding, it requires room to experiment, question, and imagine beyond the expected. In short: breaking the wall of constrained scholarship means protecting creativity and academic freedom together with societal allies.

Breaking the Wall Between Science and Society

A major theme throughout the summit was the urgency of wishing to build and maintain trust between the general public and scientists. Speakers from Canada, Mexico, Kenya, and Europe stressed that science engagement is essential for the future of science, public health and democracy. Meaningful engagement requires far more than transparency or accessible information. Trust grows from connection, relevance, and reciprocity.

Examples from around the world highlighted this diversity of contexts. In Canada, trust in scientists remains relatively strong, but trust in institutions is eroding. In Mexico, scientists bring science directly into daily life through activities in subways and having the largest science museum located inside the metro system. In Kenya, who is trusted often depends less on formal authority and more on relational credibility: local researchers who show up, listen, and demonstrate genuine care may be trusted more than institutions.

As scientists, we need to care ánd we need to show it. That means truly engaging with the public, tailoring communication to local contexts rather than relying on generic narratives, openly acknowledging uncertainty and (past) mistakes, and explaining how scientific recommendations can shift as evidence evolves. The COVID-19 pandemic underscored how crucial it is for researchers to communicate uncertainty honestly, rather than present knowledge as fixed.

The summit also showcased practical tools for science engagement. Improvisation theatre, for example, helps scientists step away from scripted narratives and respond directly to the needs and questions of an audience. Other projects, like mapping resilient “giant corals,” demonstrated how co-creation with local stakeholders can make research both more robust and more meaningful.

Ultimately, lowering the wall between science and society requires bringing scientific knowledge into communities and investing in sustained, context-specific personal relationships. Trust builds through people, not through institutions.

Breaking the Walls of Controversies

The summit’s programme was interspersed with the diplomatic ties between Germany and Israel celebrating a 60 years anniversary in 2025, along with the role that scientific cooperation has played in building and sustaining those ties. In a panel discussion, rising antisemitic incidents on university campuses were widely discussed. At the same time, we felt there was comparatively little space at the summit to discuss the war in Gaza in terms of allegations of Israeli government war crimes and the broader legal and diplomatic implications for Europe–Israel relations, including the genocide case currently before the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Coming from The Netherlands, this felt uncomfortable. Germany’s relationship with Israel is shaped by a distinct historical perspective, which creates a different political and institutional reflex than the context we operate in. In The Netherlands, “red line” protests and campus mobilisations have put Dutch universities under pressure to reconsider collaborations with Israeli institutions, and the systematic destruction of education in Gaza, referred to by UN experts as “scholasticide”, has recently been highlighted in a staff- and student-initiated exhibition at Leiden University

One of the most difficult sessions we attended focused on the human consequences of the attacks in Israel on 7 October 2023. It felt emotionally heavy because it brought us close to survivors’ lived experiences of severe trauma, which was difficult to absorb, even while the conversation necessarily moved toward research questions and clinical implications. Neuroscientist Prof. Roy Salomon presented emerging research with survivors of the Nova music festival. Many of them were young people who, like at many festivals, had often taken (a combination of) psychoactive substances. The unprecedented research asks how these substances might alter the lived experience of trauma and the pathways of recovery afterward. The first findings suggest that MDMA may be associated with more resilient outcomes. The findings contribute to our understanding of trauma processing and may contribute to novel clinical targets for trauma support. Prof. Eric Vermetten, who spoke in the same session, underlined the need for clear regulations to work towards effective use of MDMA in a clinical setting.

Conclusion

In summary, in this blog we reflected on the walls we hope to see fall next, including those that separate scientists across borders, constraint scholarship, and science and society. We also considered what early-career researchers can do to help bring these walls down and build something better in their place. Early-career researchers may not set budgets or foreign policy, but we can fill knowledge gaps where other researchers are silenced or constrained. We can defend academic freedom by pushing back against reward systems that favour short-term, measurable outputs and against unnecessary bureaucracy. We can keep dialogue open while still engaging with controversial topics. And we can invest in sustained, context-specific engagement with communities, not only to strengthen trust in science but also to improve the relevance and robustness of our research.

We realize that this blog touches on sensitive topics, and we invite those who have strong sentiments about any of the above, for a coffee to start, restart or continue the dialogue, in the spirit of Falling Walls.

We thank the Falling Walls Foundation, Young Academy Leiden and the Institute of Education and Child Studies at Leiden University for their financial support, and De Jonge Akademie for distributing selected free entrance tickets which enabled us to attend the Science Summit.

During the preparation of this blog, we made use of ChatGPT (OpenAI) to help rephrase arguments and improve grammar. The authors reviewed and edited the content as needed and take full responsibility for the final text.