Uploaded December 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
This video features the Falling Walls Science Breakthrough of the Year 2025 in the Women's Impact Award category, presented on 9 November 2025 at the Falling Walls Science Summit in Berlin.
Ângela Gonçalves – Breaking the Wall of Healthy Aging in Women
Ângela Gonçalves, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Germany, combines AI, molecular biology, and clinical insight to tackle under-researched women’s health issues such as endometriosis, ovarian cancer, and menopause. Her work develops non-invasive tools for early detection, personalised care, and healthier aging, directly challenging gender bias in medicine.
Ângela trained in Computer Science at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, focusing on biologically inspired AI algorithms. After a research stay at the European Space Agency, she earned her PhD in Computational Molecular Biology at the European Bioinformatics Institute, University of Cambridge, in 2012. She conducted postdoctoral research in population genomics at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. Since 2018, she leads a joint wet- and dry-lab research group at DKFZ and co-leads the Digital Cancer Prevention group at the National Cancer Prevention Center. In 2024, she became a full Professor at Heidelberg University.
Her groundbreaking project investigates how the biological clock in the female reproductive tract affects aging and disease, using menstrual fluid as a model system to track somatic mutations over time, aiming to advance cancer prevention, early detection, and healthy aging.
Explore the playlist with all Falling Walls Breakthrough Presentations 2025:
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkhVBjzvMPh1qOBhTfCYOPxxonWrqF8t7
🌐 Learn More About Falling Walls:
falling-walls.com
📩 Stay Updated – Subscribe to our newsletter:
falling-walls.com/get-involved/newsletter
#FallingWalls #ScienceSummit25
Image Credits
Menstrual blood, artwork title "Red Dress 1". This file comes from the Wellcome Collection, a website operated by Wellcome Trust, a global charitable foundation based in the United Kingdom. Refer to Wellcome blog post (archive). Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
Berlin Wall Foundation, Photo: Detlef Gallinge
ELAB, Archive of the Reconciliation Parish
ELAB, Archive of the Reconciliation Parish
This video features the Falling Walls Science Breakthrough of the Year 2025 in the Women's Impact Award category, presented on 9 November 2025 at the Falling Walls Science Summit in Berlin.
Ângela Gonçalves – Breaking the Wall of Healthy Aging in Women
Ângela Gonçalves, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Germany, combines AI, molecular biology, and clinical insight to tackle under-researched women’s health issues such as endometriosis, ovarian cancer, and menopause. Her work develops non-invasive tools for early detection, personalised care, and healthier aging, directly challenging gender bias in medicine.
Ângela trained in Computer Science at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, focusing on biologically inspired AI algorithms. After a research stay at the European Space Agency, she earned her PhD in Computational Molecular Biology at the European Bioinformatics Institute, University of Cambridge, in 2012. She conducted postdoctoral research in population genomics at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. Since 2018, she leads a joint wet- and dry-lab research group at DKFZ and co-leads the Digital Cancer Prevention group at the National Cancer Prevention Center. In 2024, she became a full Professor at Heidelberg University.
Her groundbreaking project investigates how the biological clock in the female reproductive tract affects aging and disease, using menstrual fluid as a model system to track somatic mutations over time, aiming to advance cancer prevention, early detection, and healthy aging.
Explore the playlist with all Falling Walls Breakthrough Presentations 2025:
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkhVBjzvMPh1qOBhTfCYOPxxonWrqF8t7
🌐 Learn More About Falling Walls:
falling-walls.com
📩 Stay Updated – Subscribe to our newsletter:
falling-walls.com/get-involved/newsletter
#FallingWalls #ScienceSummit25
Image Credits
Menstrual blood, artwork title "Red Dress 1". This file comes from the Wellcome Collection, a website operated by Wellcome Trust, a global charitable foundation based in the United Kingdom. Refer to Wellcome blog post (archive). Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
Berlin Wall Foundation, Photo: Detlef Gallinge
ELAB, Archive of the Reconciliation Parish
ELAB, Archive of the Reconciliation Parish
