Sabine VanderLinden

Activate Innovation Ecosystems | Tech Ambassador | Founder of Alchemy Crew Ventures + Scouting for Growth | Chair, Board Member, Advisor | Honorary Senior Visiting Fellow-Bayes Business School

I don't just talk about innovation, AI, workforce or digital transformation— I build the bridges that make things real.

As Founder & Venture-Client Partner of Alchemy Crew Ventures, I run global R&D + Adoption Labs that connect Fortune 500 insurers and corporates with the most brilliant tech ventures on the planet. Think of us as the “fast lane” between startup brilliance and enterprise adoption. My themes include FinTech/ InsurTech and deploying AI at scale responsibly. 

What this looks like in numbers:
📍 Accelerated 160+ ventures and sourced 55,000+ startups worldwide
📍 Invested in 35+ early stage startups
📍 Delivered exits like FitSense → Zurich (2018), MyFutureNow → L&G (2019), and Tia Tech → Sapiens (2020)
📍 Created Insurer-led Acceleration and Scaleup programs that turned pilot purgatory into scalable commercial success

But the real story? I help founders land their first million-dollar client, build authentic personal brands, and help corporates cut through the noise to adopt tech that drives real growth.

My world revolves around:
📍 Venture Clienting 2.0 & Corporate Innovation Frameworks
📍 AI (ethics, adoption, emerging risks)
📍 Climate Resilience, Risk Futures & Sustainability Transformation
📍 The Future of Work (where humans + tech thrive together)

Beyond Alchemy Crew:
📍 Co-editor of the bestselling INSURTECH Book
📍 Wrote forewords for the Future of Insurance and Momentum
📍 Lecturer on Corporate Venturing at Bayes Business School
📍 Board + advisory roles across VCs, Scaleups (The CareVoice), foundations (Women to Watch), standards (ACORD Solutions) & global insurers
📍 Top 10 Business Podcast "Scouting for Growth" 
📍 Recognized with 10+ awards, including Most Influential CEO – Insurance Corporate Ventures (2024/2025)

My channels beyond LinkedIn:
x.com: @SabineVdL
instagram: @sabinevdlofficial
Medium: @sabine_vdl
Podcast: Scouting for Growth and Beyond Tech Frontiers
Newsletter: alchemycrew.ventures

What drives me?
Creating value where others see friction.
Turning hype into measurable outcomes.
And making sure technology becomes a force for good, not just another buzzword.

Award List (10+): Insurance Times-Tech & Innovation Awards Winner (2018), Grant Thornton-Face of a Vibrant Economy (2018), Business Insurance-Women to Watch Honoree (2019), Corporate Vision-Venture Validation Firm of the Year (2021), Finalist Women in Insurance Perseverance Award (2021), Awarded Perseverant Company to Watch in (2021), ACORD Awards (2020/2023), Most Influential CEO-Insurance Corporate Ventures (2024/2025).

Co-founder, Chief Executive Officer & Venture Partner

Delivering venture labs that accelerate, industrialize and democratize the way tech ventures engage with corporations. These labs apply acceleration, co-creation, and commercialization techniques to de-risk the way insurers and financial institutions collaborate, grow, and scale their venture-led growth initiatives.

Also, systematizing for a select group of growth ventures the way their engagement with corporations.

You can find out more 👉🏽 https://alchemycrew.com/

🌟 As we stand on the edge of a new year, it's clear the last 12 months weren't about smarter dashboards or louder chatbots. 💫

They were about a fundamental shift in what AI can do.

Our journey with SAS into Trustworthy #AgenticAI has been a revelation. Across every conversation, case study, and poll, the same powerful signals emerged—pointing to a future where AI doesn't just analyze. It acts. Human-led and agent operated. 

If you missed parts of the series, this thread connects it all. If you've been with us the whole time, this is the blueprint for what comes next.

The 5 Big Takeaways:

🤖 Action over analysis. Intelligent decisioning is already stopping fraud and rerouting claims in real-time. Decisions in motion—not data on a screen.

🔒 Trust through transparency. Governance and human oversight aren't optional. They're the entry ticket.

🧠 Smarter AI from synthetic data. It's how AI learns faster, safer, and in ways real-world data never could.

👫 Human + AI = Dream Team. The most powerful applications are human-in-the-loop. AI handles speed and scale. Humans provide judgment and ethics.

🚀 Autonomy is here—prepare now. Leading companies aren't asking if Agentic AI matters. They're asking how fast they can operationalize it responsibly.

Agentic AI will reshape organizations. The question is: who can deploy it with confidence? Which of these five insights resonates most with your 2026 strategy?

Happy New Year 2026.

#BusinessTransformation #FutureOfWork #Leadership

SAS - The 5 Big Takeaways

As the festive cheer of Christmas settles into a quiet hum, I find my thoughts drifting back to a truly magical experience on Faena Beach. 

You will find there on the beach Es Devlin’s breathtaking installation, “Library of Us,” that offers the most profound gift of the season: perspective.

Imagine a towering, mirrored library, shaped like a pyramid, rising from the sand. Inside, 2,500 books stand as silent storytellers, their spines a kaleidoscope of color against the endless blue of the Miami sky. The structure itself is a masterpiece, its reflective surfaces blurring the lines between the tangible and the infinite, the sky and the sea.

At the heart of this installation appeara a quote from Jorge Luis Borges: 

“I am not sure that I exist actually. I am every book I’ve ever read.” 

“Library of Us” is a physical embodiment of this idea, a testament to the fact that we are all, in essence, a collection of the stories we’ve absorbed, the perspectives we’ve encountered, and the lives we’ve touched.

In these quiet moments after Christmas, a time for reflection and connection, this installation feels particularly poignant. It provides an invitation to see the world through the eyes of others, to find connection in our shared human story, and to recognize the beauty in our collective diversity. 

We have to admit that this is a powerful reminder that even with our differing points of view, we can coexist in harmony, much like the thousands of books in that library on the Feana Beach.

As we step into the new year, let’s carry the spirit of the “Library of Us.” 

It’s a reminder to stay open, to listen, and to remember that every person we meet is a library of stories waiting to be read. 


What a beautiful way to begin a new chapter.

Credit: Art

🌟 The ground just shifted beneath the world of risk! And most leaders missed it.  Here is why...💫

Did you see this? Last week, Munich Re began insuring AI model errors for mortgage lenders. While this certainly demonstrates that AI is becoming a more prominent emerging risk in our lives, it also signals a seismic shift: the #AgenticFrontier is no longer a theoretical future—it has arrived.

For years, we've talked about transformation. Yet Boston Consulting Group (BCG)'s data shows a stark reality: while 78% of P&C insurers are “dabbling” with AI in the claims process, only 4% have successfully scaled it. Imagine what this means across the insurance operations and the overall enterprise.

The rest are caught in the “pilot trap,” a sinkhole for laggards.
The gap between the talkers and the doers has become a chasm. The 4% are fundamentally redesigning their businesses around AI.

This is no longer about whether you'll embrace #agenticAI. It's about how you'll lead the transformation. For corporate leaders, the mandate is clear. For founders, the 18-month enterprise sales cycle is now optional for those who can provide de-risked, insured solutions.

Here is the playbook for those ready to move from ambition to action:

1️⃣   Stop the science projects. Pick one end-to-end process—claims, underwriting, finance, customer support—and commit to a complete, AI-driven redesign. The real ROI is in redesigning the unglamorous, high-impact back-end operations, not bolting AI onto broken workflows.

2️⃣   De-risk your transformation. AI error insurance is now a board-ready mandate. Use it to turn AI from a high-risk experiment into a scalable, enterprise-grade asset.

3️⃣   Reframe the protection gap as an innovation mandate. The same creativity used to insure algorithms must be turned toward insuring humanity against Nat Cat/ extreme weather risks and other systemic risks. This is the largest market opportunity of the next decade.

The uninsurable world is a choice, not a necessity. The leaders of 2026 will be those who use the tools of the agentic frontier to rewrite the rules of risk.

What is the most fundamental “gap” you see in your organization’s AI strategy right now? Please share...

Is it the tech, the talent, or the trust?

And enjoy this week's newsletter. 👏🏽

#CapacityGap #TrustbyDesign

The Week That Changed Everything Last week, while most of us were winding down for the holidays, the ground shifted beneath the world of risk. Munich 

Open article: The Frontier Is Here: Your Top 10 Insurance Trends for 2026 by Sabine VanderLinden • 10 min read

The Frontier Is Here: Your Top 10 Insurance Trends for 2026

I could not resist! Even dogs know: transformation takes teamwork, patience… and a lot of kneading. 🐾🍞

Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a 2026 filled with ideas that rise beautifully—especially the bold ones.

🎄 Three days before Christmas is a funny time to talk about Agentic AI.
But it’s actually the perfect one. 👇🏽

Because right now, leadership teams aren’t buying tools. They’re quietly asking a more complex question:

“What do we trust our AI to do in 2026?”

Over the past weeks, one message kept surfacing — across exec conversations, real use cases, and your feedback:

👉🏼  Agentic AI only scales when trust is designed in.
➡️  Not later.
➡️  Not after the experiment or going into implementation.
➡️  From day one.

So as we close the year, here’s a practical recap — the checklist enterprises should take into 2026:

📌 1. Explainability is non-negotiable: If you can’t explain a decision, you can’t defend it to regulators, customers, or your own board.
📌 2. Clear autonomy boundaries beat “AI optimism”: Define exactly what AI can decide, when humans intervene, and how edge cases escalate.
📌 3. Human fallback is a strategic feature, not a failure: The most resilient systems assume exceptions and design graceful handoffs to experienced humans.
📌 4. Ethics isn’t a policy, it’s a process: Regular, diverse review of autonomous decisions keeps bias and blind spots from compounding.
📌 5. Continuous monitoring protects trust: Drift, anomalies, and unintended behavior don’t announce themselves. You have to watch constantly.

This is why I keep saying:

Don’t build GenAI foundations on quicksand. The organisations that will lead in 2026 won’t be the ones with the flashiest demos.  They’ll be the ones who can let AI act responsibly.

My question for you, as we head into the holidays: Which of these five will be your biggest focus in 2026 — and why?

👇 Drop it in the comments. Let’s compare notes before the year resets.

#AgenticAI #TrustedAI #SASViya

CEO & Founder, Top 100 Women of the Future | AI, Web3, Metaverse - Advisor & Deep Tech Investor | Keynote Speaker | Masterclass | Master Human-Centric Tech Transformation

Awarded Global Future Tech and FinTech Leader | Keynote Speaker | Board Member | Executive & Board Education, Advisor | Book Author

Tech isn’t just for profit. Done right, it widens access and creates more for more people.

I’m a globally recognised future tech expert. I work with C-level leaders and boards on AI, blockchain, Web3, the metaverse, and digital transformation—with a clear line on responsible, ethical AI.

Over the last 20 year+, I have had  senior roles at Fortune 500 companies such as AXA and UBS. I’ve also worked with and advised boards across finance and insurance (Blackrock, Unicredit). I currently serve as an active board member at Generali.

My work is simple: turn fast-moving tech into clear choices and practical plans leaders can act on.

Three years ago, I launched my own brand: the marthaverse.

Since then:
• 20,000+ executives have joined my education programs
• NEW: Digital Diplomacy Masterclass
• 100+ keynote talks
• 20,000+ people have joined my live experiences

What I do
• Keynotes and fireside chats (board and C-suite audiences)
• Executive and board programs on responsible AI and digital strategy
• White papers, research collaborations, and thought-leadership projects
• Partner content for LinkedIn: interviews, series, events, and co-created posts
• AI digital marketing content with my partner at krea.global: video, campaigns, avatars, and digital twins

Community and publishing
I’m the meta-host of Global Digital Pride and an ambassador for AllStarWomen DAO.

I’m also a co-author of Fast Future Blurs (Wiley) and Lumina (The Holo Art Anthology with1000+ pages of cutting edge art, space, tech & science) and several Whitepapers (Science, Technology, AI). 

Honours include
Top 100 Woman of the Future
Top 100 Woman in Business in Switzerland (2024/2025)
Top 5 Women in Tech in Europe (WomeninTech 2024)
Top Voice on LinkedIn (2024/2025)
Top LinkedIn Influencer in Future Tech and FinTech (Favikon)
TOP 30 Global Tech Voices (World Future Awards 2025)
Top 3 in Switzerland in Finance and Web3 (Favikon 2025)
Peace Ambassador U.N.P.F (2024/2025)

If you’re looking for a keynote speaker, a partner for a white paper, or someone to co-create content on LinkedIn, reach out.

I’m also open to additional board roles where responsible tech and strong governance matter.

Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld

Doctors told millions of people their knee cartilage was gone for good. A small molecule just proved them wrong in mice—and in human tissue.

Think about that.

Osteoarthritis affects roughly 20% of the U.S. population. Millions of knee and hip replacements every year. For decades, the standard answer has been: manage the pain, delay the inevitable, replace the joint.

The long-held assumptions:
 ↳ Once cartilage wears down, it doesn't come back
 ↳ Chondrocytes lose their regenerative capacity with age
 ↳ Joint replacement is the only real solution for end-stage disease
 ↳ Damage is permanent

What Stanford researchers found instead:
 ↳ An enzyme called 15-PGDH rises in aging joints and breaks down PGE2, a molecule that supports tissue repair
 ↳ Block that enzyme, and existing cartilage cells reprogram toward a younger gene-expression profile
 ↳ In aged mice, the drug regrew smooth, load-bearing hyaline cartilage—not scar tissue
 ↳ After ACL-type injuries, treated mice kept thicker cartilage and better movement

Here's the part that stopped me:

Human cartilage from end-stage joint replacements—tissue that had clinically "failed"—responded to the same treatment in the lab. It started forming new articular cartilage.

Tissue we'd written off still had dormant regenerative capacity. It just needed the right signal to wake up.

The path forward:
An oral version of this 15-PGDH inhibitor (MF-300) has already passed Phase 1 safety testing in humans for age-related muscle weakness. The same biological axis underlies both muscle and cartilage aging.

No osteoarthritis patients have been treated yet. But the door is open.

The ripple effect:
 1 study proves cartilage can regenerate in aged tissue
 10 replications means it's real
 100 patients in trials means we learn if it works in humans
 At scale = millions of people might keep their original knees

We spent decades accepting that worn joints only get worse.

This research asks a different question: what if the cells were waiting for permission to rebuild?

Follow me, Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld, for breakthroughs where science rewrites what we thought was permanent.

♻️ Share if you believe regenerative medicine deserves more attention—and more funding.

Sources: Blau, H. M., & Bhutani, N. (2026, January 3). Anti-aging injection regrows knee cartilage and prevents arthritis. SciTechDaily.

Singla, M., Wang, Y. X., Monti, E., Bedi, Y., Agarwal, P., Su, S., Ancel, S., Hermsmeier, M., Devisetti, N., Pandey, A., Bakooshli, M. A., Palla, A. R., Goodman, S., Blau, H. M., & Bhutani, N. (2025). Inhibition of 15-hydroxy prostaglandin dehydrogenase promotes cartilage regeneration. Science.

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Board & Executive Advisor on AI Accountability and Human Impact Former Fortune 500 finance executive helping leaders make responsible decisions before risk, regulation or reputation force the issue

Nick Kalikajaros 尼克

Two teenagers asked a question most scientists wouldn’t think to ask: what if sound could clean water?

Think about that.

Microplastics are everywhere. In our bloodstreams. In unborn babies. In the water we drink. Most particles are so small they slip through even the finest filters.​

In a small community near Houston, two high schoolers from The Woodlands, Texas — Victoria Ou and Justin Huang — stared at cloudy water samples. 

No government lab. No corporate funding. Just curiosity and a bold hypothesis.​

What water filtration usually requires:
↳ Expensive membranes that clog and fail
​↳ Chemical treatments with side effects
​↳ Massive infrastructure
↳ Budgets most communities can’t afford

What these teenagers built instead:
↳ High‑frequency ultrasound waves tuned to push microplastics away from the water outflow​
↳ A “wall of sound” that forces particles into a tight region, like iron filings around a magnet​
↳ Once concentrated, the plastics become much easier to block and collect
↳ A pen‑sized device—compact, low‑power, and designed to be affordable if scaled​

Here’s the part that stopped me:
In lab tests, their prototype removed around 84–94% of suspended microplastics in a single pass. No chemicals. No expensive membranes. Just physics.​

Their project, “Acoustic Filtration: Harnessing Ultrasonic Technology for the Streamlined Removal of Microplastic Particles from Water Flow,” earned them the $50,000 Gordon E. Moore Award at Regeneron ISEF 2024 and international recognition. 

But the real breakthrough is what it opens: a realistic path toward removing the plastics we can’t see from the water we drink.​

Picture a village in a remote region. No access to industrial filtration. A small, affordable ultrasound device integrated into a local system, using sound waves to strip invisible pollution from the only water source they have. 

That’s the vision sitting behind this innovation — still early‑stage, but full of potential.​

We spent decades building billion‑dollar filtration systems.

Two teenagers, Victoria and Justin, asked a simpler question: what if we let sound do the work?

Follow me, Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld, for innovations where young minds rewrite what’s possible.

♻️ Share if you believe the future of clean water might come from your own curiosity. 

Resources: Huang & Ou (Regeneron ISEF 2024) – “Acoustic Filtration: Harnessing Ultrasonic Technology for the Streamlined Removal of Microplastic Particles from Water Flow”
​
ACS ES&T Water – “A Novel Application of Ultrasound for Removal of Aqueous Microplastics” (2025)
​

​

A college student with quadriplegia types math equations with her tongue.

No surgery. No headgear. Just a retainer.

She’s studying math and computer science. She takes notes in class, texts friends, and researches assignments—often in places where voice control isn’t an option. Libraries. Lectures. Group study rooms.

The device is MouthPad^, built by MIT spin-off Augmental. It’s a custom 3D-printed retainer that sits on the roof of your mouth and turns tongue movement into cursor control.

Think about what assistive tech usually asks people to accept:
 ↳ Surgical implants, recovery time, and real risk
 ↳ Visible headgear that turns you into “the person with the device”
 ↳ Voice commands that fail the moment the room needs to be quiet
 ↳ Price tags that put independence out of reach

What Augmental built instead:
 ↳ A touchpad for the tongue: swipe to move, press to click
 ↳ Head-tracking for broad motion, tongue reserved for precise control
 ↳ Bluetooth pairing like a normal mouse—no special software
 ↳ $1,500 during early access
 ↳ Users wearing it up to 9 hours a day with low fatigue

Here’s the part that stopped me.

Her mother called receiving the MouthPad^ “the most significant moment since her injury.” 

Not the diagnosis. 

Not the rehab milestones. 

A dental retainer that gave her daughter control back—without making her life louder, more visible, or more medical.

In a lecture hall, no one knows she’s controlling her laptop. 
That’s not a side benefit. 
That’s the design.

For boards and executive teams, this isn’t a feel-good edge case. It’s governance. When non-invasive, low-cost accessibility exists and organisations still choose systems that shut people out, the issue stops being “technology limits” and becomes leadership. Procurement standards, inclusion policy, and digital decisions determine who gets full access—and who is left working around choices made for them. That’s when accessibility stops being a design preference and becomes an accountability issue.

And it raises a blunt question:

Why did we spend decades trying to restore digital access by opening skulls when a workable interface might already be inside the mouth?

♻️ Share if you think accessibility shouldn’t require surgery—just better design.

This is one of the stories from my keynote on Designing Accessible Futures: AI, Ethics and Inclusion in Practice for boards and leadership teams.

Source: MIT News and Augmental (MouthPad^ assistive technology).

Video Insta luminica.ai

A man carved a shelter inside a fallen giant tree.
30 days. No power tools. No architecture degree.

Just hands — and engineering older than any university.

Think about that.

Viral bushcraft creators are turning massive fallen logs into hidden homes — excavating, reinforcing, and weatherproofing structures using techniques their ancestors knew.

Load distribution along the trunk.
Natural arch shapes for strength.
Drainage carved into the base.
Insulation from bark and clay.

Civil engineering, taught by the forest.

What many modern organisations still assume about building capability:
 ↳ Learning happens in classrooms with textbooks
 ↳ Simulations replace real-world experience
 ↳ People need expensive labs to understand physics
 ↳ Theory must come before practice

What hands-on builders prove instead:
 ↳ 92% of educators report better math mastery through environment-based learning
 ↳ 97% of teachers see improved problem-solving from place-based curricula
 ↳ Hands-on engineering tasks score 4.23 out of 5 for knowledge construction
 ↳ People who build solve problems faster than those who only study theory

And yet most organisations still train people away from the environments where real judgment is formed.

Here’s the part that stopped me:

These builders aren’t cutting live trees.
They’re transforming decay into protection.

A fallen giant that would rot for decades becomes shelter, classroom, and proof that nothing has to be wasted.

That’s circular design thinking — taught without a single lecture.

Every beam placed teaches load distribution.
Every joint sealed reveals material behaviour.
Every drainage channel carved demonstrates hydrology.

The Multiplication Effect:

1 hands-on project = 3 semesters of theory come alive
 10 outdoor programs = communities of problem-solvers
 100 schools adopting = engineering education transformed

At scale = a generation that learns by building, not just reading.

The real risk isn’t lack of intelligence —
 it’s leaders who’ve never had to test their understanding against reality.

We spent decades making capability abstract.

A better question for leaders:
do we keep designing systems that teach theory in isolation —
or ones that produce judgment through contact with reality?

Worth reflecting on how we develop real capability.

Video source: Unknown and might be AI generated. Similar bushcraft builds on YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook show single builders creating shelters under roots or on top of giant fallen trees, often with basic hand tools and no heavy machinery.

Evidence that environment‑based learning leads to higher math and science scores and better problem‑solving than traditional classrooms. (WWF “Schools for Nature”, 2019; Becker et al., Frontiers in Psychology, 2022; Gray Family Foundation, “Empirical Evidence Supporting Benefits of Outdoor School”, 2015)

Christmas morning. A child in a hospital bed is waiting for magic no algorithm can give.

Sit with that.

This year, we watched AI write poems, spot disease, and read markets. Useful tools. But the moments that eased people’s pain didn’t come from software:

A nurse singing at 2 a.m.
A cleaner tucking teddy bears onto windowsills.
A pirate who stayed five extra hours because the kids asked him to.

What tech did for us:
 ↳ Quicker diagnoses
 ↳ Better forecasts
 ↳ Less busywork
 ↳ Cleaner processes

What people did:
 ↳ A hand held a little longer
 ↳ Tears turned into laughter
 ↳ Pain softened because someone stayed
 ↳ Relief no prescription can write

Studies put numbers on it: compassionate care can cut recovery time by 28%. Human connection can cut hospital readmissions by 40%. You don’t need a study to believe it. 

You’ve felt it—the doctor who met your eyes, the stranger who showed up.

The ripple:

One act of presence makes one person feel seen.
Ten people choosing that can change a ward.
A hundred leaders putting people first can rebuild the system.
Then tech supports care instead of crowding it out.

We spent this year asking what AI can do.

Ask the harder question: what should humans never stop doing?

Hold the hand. Stay the extra minute. Be the person who makes a dark room lighter.

This Christmas, the strongest tool isn’t in a cloud.

It’s you.

Merry Christmas. May we build a future where progress serves people, not the other way around.

Follow me, Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld, for more on a future led by humanity.

♻️ Share if you believe the biggest advances still come from human connection.

Alzheimer’s was reversed in mice.

Not slowed. Reversed.

Think about that.

Mice with severe memory loss couldn’t solve a maze. After treatment, they could again. They performed like healthy mice. The damage didn’t just stop. It rolled back.

The work comes from University Hospitals Cleveland and Case Western Reserve. It was published in Cell Reports Medicine in December 2025.

What we thought we knew about Alzheimer’s:
 ↳ 55 million people live with dementia worldwide
 ↳ Treatments slow decline at best
 ↳ Once memory goes, it doesn’t come back
 ↳ Families watch loved ones forget their names

What this study reports:
 ↳ NAD+, a molecule tied to cellular energy, drops as Alzheimer’s progresses
 ↳ By 6 months, the mice showed depleted NAD+ and major memory loss
 ↳ Restoring NAD+ with a compound called P7C3-A20 reversed the damage
 ↳ Biomarkers returned to normal. Memory returned, too

One detail matters even more:
In younger mice, keeping NAD+ steady stopped the disease from developing in the first place. Same idea, two outcomes: prevention and reversal.

Now zoom out to humans.

Picture someone with advanced Alzheimer’s. They don’t recognize their partner. They can’t find their way home. In the mouse version of that, treatment brought them back.

Lead researcher Andrew Pieper described this as evidence that damaged brains may repair themselves if they have enough energy.

What this does not mean (yet):
 ↳ No human has been cured with NAD+ therapy
 ↳ Store-bought NAD+ boosters are not P7C3-A20
 ↳ Some NAD+ precursors showed cancer-related risks in animal studies
 ↳ Human Alzheimer’s has many moving parts beyond energy failure

How progress usually goes:
 1 study in mice shows what’s possible
 10 replications tell us it’s real
 100 people in trials tell us if it carries over
 If it does, 55 million families get more than “we can slow it down”

For decades, we told Alzheimer’s families the best we can do is slow the slide.

This paper makes a stronger claim: when brain energy is restored, memory and function can return—at least in a rigorous animal model—and that gives researchers a clear target to chase in humans.

It’s preclinical. It’s in mice. It’s not a cure.

But it's the first time "reversal" appeared in the same sentence as "Alzheimer's" with data to back it up.

The real breakthrough isn't the compound.

It's the possibility that we've been asking the wrong question.

Not "how do we slow the decline?"

But "how do we give the brain enough energy to repair itself?"

Follow me, Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld, for breakthroughs where science meets human hope.

♻️ Share if you believe Alzheimer's research deserves more attention—and more funding.

Source: Cell Reports Medicine study from the Pieper lab Pharmacologic reversal of advanced Alzheimer’s disease in mice.., December 22, 2025.

A 10-year-old walked 20 minutes on a treadmill. Her brain lit up differently for the rest of the school day.

Think about that.

Hillman et al. ran a study with 20 children. One day: 20 minutes of moderate walking. Another day: sitting quietly. After walking, EEG showed larger P3 brain-wave amplitudes and shorter latencies—markers of faster cognitive processing and sharper attention.

They also performed better on academic tests. Not slightly. Measurably.

What we've assumed about brain health:
↳ It requires intense exercise or expensive interventions
↳ Cognitive sharpness is mostly genetic
↳ Kids just need to sit still and focus

What the research shows instead:
↳ 20 minutes of walking changes cortical rhythms in real time
↳ Interrupting prolonged sitting boosts cerebral blood flow and executive function
↳ Higher habitual physical activity links to larger hippocampal and basal ganglia volumes
↳ Nature walks let executive attention rest—urban walks demand more frontal control

Here's what stopped me:

I took a walk at the beach last week. No agenda. No podcast. Just the ocean, birdsong, and my own footsteps. By the time I returned, the problem I'd been struggling with for days had an answer. My mind had done the work while my body moved.

That's not anecdote. It's neuroscience. EEG studies show nature walks reduce frontal midline theta activity—the brain's way of stepping off the treadmill of constant control.

The problem:
↳ More than half of US adults fail to meet physical activity guidelines
↳ Europeans sit 7–8 hours daily in car-dependent, office-based lives
↳ Higher sedentary time correlates with poorer fluid intelligence and memory

The design question:
When cities prioritise cars over people, they're designing in lower baseline attention and creativity. When they build walkable streets, protected bike lanes, and accessible public transport, ordinary trips become quiet upgrades for the brain.

Picture a child who walks to school through tree-lined streets instead of sitting in a car. Those 20–40 minutes of gentle movement become a built-in cognitive primer—not an optional workout.

We spent decades asking how to boost brain performance.

A better question: what if we just designed cities that let people walk?

Follow me, Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld, for stories where science meets how we live.

♻️ Share if you believe better brain health should be built into our streets, not just our schedules.

Source: Hillman, C. H., Pontifex, M. B., Raine, L. B., Castelli, D. M., Hall, E. E., & Kramer, A. F.. The Effect of Acute Treadmill Walking on Cognitive Control and Academic Achievement in Preadolescent Children. Pediatrics.

An axolotl lost its leg. Four weeks later, it had a new one—bones, nerves, muscles, skin. Perfect.

Think about that.

For decades, scientists assumed this kind of regeneration was unique to salamanders. A biological trick humans could never access.

Then researchers cracked the axolotl genome. What they found rewrote the story.

What we assumed about human healing:
↳ Once tissue is damaged, it scars over permanently
↳ Regenerative capacity disappears after embryonic development
↳ Complex regrowth requires biological machinery humans don't have
↳ Limbs, hearts, spinal cords—once lost, gone forever

What the research shows instead:
↳ Humans share the same Shox gene that directs limb growth in axolotls
↳ Retinoic acid signaling pathways—key to regeneration—exist in both species
↳ The basic architecture for complex regrowth is conserved across vertebrates
↳ The code is there. It's just not activated.

Here's the part that stopped me:

The primary barrier isn't missing genes. It's scar tissue. When humans are injured, our bodies prioritise rapid sealing over regrowth. Scarring effectively silences the regenerative program that axolotls keep running.

Scientists are now investigating how to bypass this "scar barrier"—reactivating dormant pathways involving genes like Catalase and FETUB that could reprogram wound sites toward regeneration instead of scarring.

The ripple effect:
A decoded genome proves the machinery exists
10 pathways identified = targets for intervention
100 patients in trials = we learn if humans can regenerate
At scale = spinal cord injuries, organ damage, and joint destruction become treatable—not terminal

Picture someone with a severed spinal cord. Today: permanent paralysis. Tomorrow: cells that remember how to rebuild.

We spent decades accepting that human bodies only scar.

A better question: what if our cells were waiting for permission to regenerate?

Follow me, Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld, for stories where science rewrites what we thought was permanent.

♻️ Share if you believe the future of medicine is already written in our genome—we just need to learn how to read it.

Resource: Nowoshilow, S., Schloissnig, S., Fei, J. F., Dahl, A., Pang, A. W., Pippel, M., & Tanaka, E. M. (2018). The axolotl genome and the evolution of key tissue formation regulators. Nature.

A 17-year-old mixed algae in a small lab hidden on his grandfather’s Hudson Valley vineyard.
 
It grabbed wet tissue and wouldn’t let go.
 
That experiment turned into VetiGel: a plant-based gel that seals wounds and helps blood clot.
 
Trauma care’s hard problem:
Severe bleeding is the leading cause of preventable trauma death.
 
A major arterial bleed can kill in 3–5 minutes.
 
Most products need firm pressure, the right wound shape, and time.
 
Deep, jagged wounds are tough to pack.
 
What Joe built:
-A gel that seals fast and triggers clotting
-No manual pressure
-Stops bleeding in under 20 seconds
-Works on skin and organs
 
The proof: In veterinary surgery on 16 dogs, VetiGel cut blood loss from 78 mL to 6.7 mL. Time to hemostasis dropped from 25 minutes to under 2.
 
Cresilon later created TraumaGel for humans. It’s FDA cleared.
 
It made Time’s “Best Inventions of 2025.” 
 
The Department of Defense signed on.
 
Picture an earthquake. A mother pinned under rubble, bleeding from a deep wound. No ambulance for 40 minutes. A responder applies gel. The bleeding stops. 

She’s still alive when rescue arrives.

We spent decades accepting some bleeds are too fast and too deep to stop in time. A kid in a vineyard lab didn’t accept that.

Follow me, Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld, for stories where curiosity changes medicine.

♻️ Share if you think big medical advances can start  everywhere. We just need imagination! 

This is my find for YOU on the the last Day of 2025 to show, how  human imagination is saving lives!

Fortune 500 Finance Exec turned AI & Emerging Tech Advisor | Helping boards and executives navigate AI, Web3 & VR with ethics and humanity | Top 100 Women of the Future | Keynote Speaker | Board Member

Roger  Gargil

A man who can move only one finger built a profitable tech startup from his hospital bed.

Think about that.

Li Xia, 36, lives in Chongqing, China. Muscular dystrophy diagnosed at age five. By adulthood: paralyzed, ventilator-dependent, able to move only one finger and one toe. Formal schooling stopped at fifth grade.

In 2020, he fell into a coma. Doctors performed a tracheotomy and warned his family: survival chances were low.

He woke up. More limited than before. But his mind was intact.

What building a tech company usually requires:
 ↳ Engineering degree
 ↳ Physical access to equipment
 ↳ Mobility to visit sites and clients
 ↳ Hands to type, build, test

What Li Xia built instead:
 ↳ Self-taught programming, physics, and computer science through online courses
 ↳ A smart agriculture control system managing irrigation, nutrients, temperature, and humidity
 ↳ Remote operation of an entire farm from his bed
 ↳ Input method: a virtual keyboard controlled by one finger and one toe

His mother, Wu Dimei, became his hands.

Under his verbal instructions, she learned to solder control boards, run network wiring, connect circuits, and maintain equipment. She even assembled a remote-controlled vehicle to move produce around the farm.

No engineering background. Just a son explaining what needed to happen, and a mother refusing to let his vision stay trapped in his head.

The farm is now operating smoothly and turning a profit.

The multiplication effect:
 1 person proves a hospital bed isn't a barrier
 10 people with severe disabilities see what's possible
 100 accessible tools built = more minds unlocked
 At scale = we stop losing talent to physical limitations

We spent decades designing workplaces for bodies that move freely.

Li Xia asked a different question: what if technology could become my body?

A virtual keyboard. Networked sensors. A mother's hands. That's all it took to turn limitation into a functioning business.

The future of work isn't about who can show up.

It's about who refuses to be counted out.

Follow me, Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld, for stories where technology extends human possibility.

♻️ Share if you believe innovation should be accessible to every mind, regardless of body.

#Accessibility #Innovation #SmartAgriculture #TechForGood

While medical device giants spent decades on $50,000 wound monitors, a 13-year-old solved chronic wound care with a hacked printer and conductive ink.

Think about that.

Anushka Naiknaware didn't wait for permission. At 13, she grabbed an inkjet printer, mixed carbon nanoparticles into water-based ink, and printed fractal sensors directly onto bandages. Cost per sensor: pennies. Lives potentially saved: millions.

Traditional Wound Care Reality:
↳ Doctors guess when to change dressings
↳ Too early = disrupted healing  
↳ Too late = infection, amputation
↳ 2.5% of Americans suffer chronic wounds

Anushka's Smart Bandage:
↳ Conductive nanoparticles sense moisture continuously
↳ No removal needed to check healing
↳ Maintains optimal moist environment
↳ Alerts clinicians exactly when to change

But here's what stopped me cold:

Chronic wounds cost us tens of billions yearly. They lead to 85% of diabetes-related amputations. Yet the solution came from a middle schooler who saw her grandmother struggle with wound care and decided to fix it.

She became the youngest Google Science Fair global winner in 2016. Won $15,000, a trip to LEGO headquarters, mentorship from industry leaders. They even named minor planet 33118 Naiknaware after her.

The real breakthrough wasn't the technology—it was the audacity.

While companies ran focus groups and feasibility studies, Anushka was in her garage printing sensors. While experts debated optimal monitoring protocols, she was testing prototypes on artificial wounds.

What changes everything:
↳ Diabetic patients avoiding amputations
↳ Elderly maintaining independence longer
↳ Healthcare costs dropping dramatically
↳ A teenager proving innovation has no age limit

The Multiplication Effect:

1 smart bandage = prevented amputation
100 hospitals adopting = thousands walking
1000 clinics equipped = mobility preserved
At scale = chronic wounds becoming manageable

Today, Anushka continues her STEM journey at MIT, building on that garage breakthrough that showed us something deeper:

We spent decades making wound care complex.
A 13-year-old made it smart with household tools.

Because when a teenager with a printer outsmarts billion-dollar R&D departments, you realise:

The next medical breakthrough isn't waiting in a lab.

It's waiting for someone brave enough to hack the problem.

Follow me, Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld for innovations where young minds solve old problems.

♻️ Share if you believe age is irrelevant when a genius like her creates major breakthroughs.

Martha Boeckenfeld

Doctors just rewrote a dying baby’s DNA while he was still alive.
Now KJ Muldoon is taking his first steps.

Think about that.

A year ago, ammonia was building up in his blood.
It was killing him.

Half the babies born with CPS1 deficiency die in their first week.
If they survive, they can face brain damage, seizures, and liver transplants.

KJ’s parents watched him on dialysis-like machines.
Protein-restricted feeds.
Nitrogen-scavenger drugs.

Everything was about buying time.

Here’s the bigger picture.

30 million Americans live with a rare disease.

95% have no FDA-approved treatment.

When the patient count is one, most drug companies won’t build a drug.
So families watch their children get worse.

KJ got something different:
↳ A gene therapy built for his exact mutation
 ↳ Six months from diagnosis to FDA green light for his personalized treatment
 ↳ A base editor sent straight to his liver cells

Today he’s at home.
Pulling up on furniture.
Laughing.
Walking.

And it wasn’t built as a one-time rescue.

They kept the delivery system.
They swapped the guide RNA.

That same base editor could be tuned for many other mutations.
One case starts to turn into a repeatable method.

Nicole and Kyle Muldoon signed consent forms that didn’t exist a decade ago.

 They chose to go first.
“We thought it was our responsibility to help our child… and other families in our position.”

Why this matters:
↳ The FDA is moving toward a “plausible mechanism” path that lets teams reuse parts of a proven approach
 ↳ An estimated 60–70% of rare diseases are single-gene disorders
 ↳ The Bespoke Gene Therapy Consortium is mapping how to do this again and again

If this keeps working, the numbers change:
1 success proves it can be done
10 shows you can repeat it
100 forces a review process that can handle volume
 
Then you’re talking about care for millions.

KJ is taking steps in his living room.
Each one says the timeline can shrink from decades to months.

For years we told families:
 “There’s nothing we can do.”
Now we can rewrite a child’s DNA fast enough to matter.

When one baby’s case pushes the FDA to open a new path, it says more than any press release:

We didn’t wait because we couldn’t.

We waited because rare kids weren’t treated like they were worth the work.

Follow me, Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld, for advances where every patient counts, no matter how rare.

♻️ Share if you think medicine should be a right, not a lottery.

Source and Image adapted: Home for Christmas: Baby treated with world-first CRISPR therapy takes first steps, Interesting Engineering, 18h Dec, 2025

A burn survivor is growing new skin from a biopsy the size of a postage stamp.

No donor wounds.
No rigid scars.
Skin that moves with her body.

Think about that, 

After the Crans-Montana fire on New Year’s Eve—40 killed, more than 80 survivors, many with burns over 60% of their bodies—Swiss doctors had to choose fast.

Do they stick with standard grafting?

Or use regenerative medicine now, knowing delay can lock patients into years of damage?

Traditional burn care means harvesting large areas of healthy skin. You create new wounds to patch old ones. Patients endure rounds of grafts, tight scarring that restricts movement, and repeat surgeries to release contractures.

denovoSkin takes a different route:
A bilayer graft grown from the patient’s own cells.
A tiny biopsy grown into large sheets with both epidermis and dermis.

The key detail: the graft is meant to grow with the patient.

A 19-year-old shouldn’t need decades of revisions. The skin is intended to integrate for good, heal with minimal scarring, and move with the body instead of pulling against it.

What studies report so far:
 ↳ big expansion from a tiny biopsy
 ↳ fewer donor-site wounds
 ↳ less contracture and tight scarring
 ↳ better long-term function and appearance

None of this was certain when the first patients were treated.

At least a dozen of the most severely injured young adults are now receiving—or being prepared for—treatment at centers working with CUTISS.

A Europe-wide Phase 3 trial is running across eight countries. First results are expected by the end of 2026.

If this becomes routine care won’t hinge only on the science. It will hinge on how fast hospitals, regulators, and payers move when the data is still early, but the cost of waiting is permanent.

One trial shows it works.
A handful of centers copy the protocol.
Enough patients get treated that “experimental” starts to sound like “standard.”

For decades, we treated severe burns as a life sentence of visible scars.

So here’s the question: when does “experimental” stop being a reason to wait—and start being a reason to act?

Source: Image adapted from CUTISS. University of Zurich news release:
“New Skin for Burn Victims” – Universität Zürich (UZH News), 15 Jan 2026.

A factory worker lost her ear in a work accident in April. In October, surgeons put it back after keeping it alive on her foot for five months.

Think about that.

Ms. Sun lost her right ear in a factory accident in Shandong, China. Her hair caught in machinery. The damage was brutal: ear gone, scalp torn, blood vessels destroyed.

A standard replant wouldn’t work. The blood supply at the site was wrecked. Surgeons had hours, not a clear path.

So they tried something no one had reported doing before.

What ear replantation usually needs:
 ↳ Reattachment within hours
 ↳ A workable blood supply at the original site
 ↳ Only ~80 cases reported worldwide
 ↳ 60–90% survival when done immediately

What Dr. Qiu Shenqiang’s team did instead:
 ↳ A 10-hour operation to graft the ear onto her foot
 ↳ Vessels 0.2–0.3 mm wide, stitched under a microscope
 ↳ The foot picked because its skin thickness matched the scalp
 ↳ Her body kept the tissue alive

Then things got ugly.
In the first days, the ear darkened. Venous drainage failed. It turned purplish-black.
To keep it from dying, nurses and surgeons manually drained blood.
500 times over five days.
All day and night. No device for it. Just people, refusing to let the tissue rot.

The ear held. Then came five months of waiting.

Ms. Sun lived with her ear on her foot. Loose shoes. Careful steps. Every day, a reminder of what she’d lost and what she might get back.

In October, a second surgery: 6 hours to move the ear back to her head.

Now her face is largely restored. She still needs minor work for scarring. But she can look in the mirror and recognize herself again.

Why this matters beyond one patient:
The method is called heterotopic grafting, placing tissue somewhere else until the original site can take it. It’s been done with fingers. Not with an ear kept alive this long, then reattached.

What this opens up:
 ↳ The replant window may stretch from hours to months
 ↳ “Unsavable” injuries get another option
 ↳ The foot can act like a living nursery for tissue
 ↳ You’re preserving a person’s face, not just closing a wound

The ripple effect:
1 case proves it can be done
 10 centers adopting it means more people get a shot
 100 surgeons trained means fewer patients hear “nothing we can do”

We spent decades treating replantation like a race against the clock.

This case suggests the surgeon can pause,  if you’re willing to move the tissue somewhere it can survive.

It's about the decision the ear wasn’t lost—and doing whatever it took to prove it.

Follow me, Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld, for stories where medicine meets human stubbornness.

♻️ Share if you think no injury should be written off before someone tries.

Source: Interesting Engineering – “In a world‑first, Chinese surgeons save patient’s ear with graft onto foot” (Dec 26, 2025)- Image adapted

Mathematicians just named shapes nature has been using for millions of years.

A child presses a nautilus shell to their ear. Years later, that same curiosity helped Gábor Domokos and his team put words—and math—to the geometry inside.

They found “soft cells”: shapes that fill space with no gaps, while shrinking sharp corners to a minimum—or removing them entirely.

What we grew up with in geometry class:
-Flat faces
-Hard edges
-Corners everywhere

What soft cells show:
-In 2D, a tile can get by with as few as two corners
-In 3D, space can be filled with shapes that have no corners at all
-Muscle cells, zebra stripes, river islands, onion layers—all fit this family
-Nautilus chambers match the model, confirmed with CT scans

The part that stopped me:

Nature didn’t wait for us to name the problem. It solved it.

Alain Goriely (Oxford), Domokos, Krisztina Regős, and Ákos G. Horváth (Budapest) pushed past theory. With the Hungarian astronaut programme HUNOR, they sent an “f2 cell” skeleton to the International Space Station on Axiom-4.

Six months of planning. NASA protocols. Then fine-tuning in orbit by commander Takuya Onishi, Peggy Whitson, and mission specialist Tibor Kapu.

In microgravity, water films formed minimal surfaces inside the skeleton—fluid behaviour you can’t get on Earth.

Onishi called it “the art of science.”

One shell → one new shape family → one ISS experiment.

And the design echoes are already here: Zaha Hadid’s work often leaned toward 2D soft-cell forms. Young architects have built a 3D soft cell inspired by the Gömböc.

We spent centuries forcing nature into boxes with corners.

Soft cells ask a simpler question: what changes if we design the way biology does?

Follow me, Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld, for discoveries where nature leads.

♻️ Share if you think the best advances come from paying attention to what evolution already solved.

Source: Oxford Mathematics. (2024, September). Coming out of their shell: how the natural world is teaching mathematicians about geometry. University of Oxford – Mathematical Institute.

A woman who hasn't left her bed in years serves coffee in Tokyo every day.

Think about that.

Fumiko Miyoshi—known as Fuchan—has spinal muscular atrophy. Her muscles weaken and shrink over time. Her body doesn't move the way she wants it to.

But from her room, she controls a 4-foot robot at DAWN Avatar Robot Cafe. It walks, gestures, pours drinks. Her face appears on a screen mounted on its chest. She greets customers, takes orders, earns about 1,000 yen per hour—standard café wages.

She works from home. The robot works in Tokyo.

What employment usually requires:
 ↳ Physical presence
 ↳ Mobility to move through a workspace
 ↳ Hands to carry, pour, serve
 ↳ A body that shows up

What Ory Yoshifuji and his team built instead:
 ↳ OriHime-D robots with 14 joints, controlled remotely via eye-tracking, switches, or minimal movement
 ↳ Pilots operating from hospital beds, living rooms, care facilities across Japan
 ↳ Real-time interaction—customers see the pilot's face, hear their voice, have actual conversations
 ↳ Shifts that fit around medical appointments, fatigue, and pain flares

Here's the part that stopped me:

Fuchan's own words: "I feel most fulfilled and enriched when I'm working. I can forget about my body, which doesn't move as I want it to, and feel that I have meaning in my life and that I am connected to society."

That's not a robot replacing a worker. That's a person reclaiming her place in the world.

Some call it dystopian. A machine serving your latte. But look closer: the worker isn't replaced. She's inside the robot.

The ripple effect:
 1 café proves remote embodiment works
 10 locations means a new employment model
 100 pilots means income and community for people written off by the labor market
 At scale = we stop defining "employable" by what a body can do

We spent decades designing workplaces for people who could show up.

DAWN asks a different question: what if showing up didn't require your body at all?

Follow me, Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld, for stories where technology returns what disability took away.

♻️ Share if you believe work should be defined by what minds can do—not what bodies can't.

#Accessibility #FutureOfWork #Robotics #Inclusion

A man with Parkinson’s sat in a chair.
He wasn’t medicated. Nobody operated. A chair sent 40 Hz vibration through his body.

His tremor stopped.

Think about that. 

A 12-week double-blind clinical trial tested 40 Hz physioacoustic therapy—low-frequency sound vibration delivered through a chair. 

The results:
↳ 76% of participants showed clinically meaningful motor improvement
 ↳ Tremor, rigidity, posture, and gait improved
 ↳ The placebo group? No significant change

For decades, mainstream medicine treated Parkinson’s like this:
↳ Symptoms require drugs or deep brain stimulation
 ↳ Sound therapy sits on the fringe
 ↳ Vibration can’t retrain neural pathways

Now the research points somewhere else:
↳ 40 Hz vibration can entrain neural and motor systems
 ↳ Vibroacoustic therapy can reduce muscle tension, pain, fatigue, and anxiety
 ↳ Music-based movement therapy can improve gait, balance, and freezing of gait
 ↳ A meta-analysis of 17 trials (598 patients) found clinically meaningful motor benefits

Picture a woman who couldn’t hold a cup without spilling. After 12 weeks, she could.

This isn’t a feel-good idea. It’s peer-reviewed neuroscience.

On January 19th, 2025, I’ll be at Davos with The Frequency School and J3D.AI (Jedi) House of Collaboration and Aurora Advisory to amplify this global movement for conscious leadership, business, and frequency to go into it:

“Frequency Reality: A Journey of Resilience and Healing in a Tech-Driven World”

I’ll be joined by Dr. Efi Pylarinou, moderated by Carina Schuster. We’ll talk about what’s happening when sound, vibration, and intention meet the nervous system—and why healing may be something you can feel, not just something you’re prescribed.

We spent decades treating symptoms, not systems.

So ask the better question: what if the body’s own frequencies are part of the answer?

Join us at Davos during the WEF. 

Register for the Frequency Circle here: ➡️ https://j3d.ai/davos

Follow me, Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld, for stories where research changes lives.

♻️ Share if you think healing should be more than pills. It should include resonance.

Sources: The Effects of Long-Term 40-Hz Physioacoustic Vibrations on Motor Symptoms in Parkinson’s Disease (2020, open-access on PubMed Central).
Music Therapy and Parkinson’s Disease: A Systematic Review (2021, Journal of Parkinson’s Disease, open-access).

Join Us To Explore The Impact of Frequency

An elevator, a transfer board, and a carpet. That's what it took to send the first wheelchair user to space.

Think about that.

Michaela "Michi" Benthaus, a 33-year-old German aerospace engineer, crossed the Kármán line in December 2025. She laughed all the way up.

In 2018, a mountain biking accident left her with a spinal cord injury. Paraplegia. Full-time wheelchair. The astronaut dream she'd carried since working with ESA? She believed it was over.

"There was no history of people with disabilities flying to space."

What the industry assumed:
↳ Spaceflight needs able-bodied crew
↳ Accessibility means billion-dollar redesigns
↳ Disabilities disqualify you from the final frontier

What Blue Origin and Hans Koenigsmann did instead:
↳ An elevator at the pad—seven stories up
↳ A patient transfer board to slide from hatch to seat
↳ Straps to secure her legs during launch and re-entry
↳ A carpet rolled out at landing so she could reach her wheelchair

Simple adaptations. No billion-dollar tech. Just people asking: what does she actually need?

The flight:
↳ 10 minutes from liftoff to landing
↳ 105 km altitude—past the edge of space
↳ Over 3 minutes of weightlessness
↳ She unstrapped, floated free, flipped upside-down, and watched Earth through the window

Her words: "The coolest experience of my life."

In 2024, Koenigsmann approached her with the offer. She thought it was a mistake. Who invites a wheelchair user to space?

Someone who decided the barrier wasn't her body. It was the design.

The multiplication effect:
1 flight = proof it can be done
10 accessible missions = a new standard
100 disabled travelers = the frontier belongs to everyone
At scale = disability stops being a disqualifier

We spent decades building rockets that could reach the stars.

A better question: who were we leaving behind on the launchpad?

Follow me, Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld, for stories where inclusion opens new frontiers.

♻️ Share if you believe space should be for everyone—not just those who fit the old design.

Video Source: CNN

2026. A New Year and we know: AI is going wild. This animation is only one piece of it.

What looked clumsy two years ago is now eerily real across text, images, video, agents, and even robots.

In 2025, video models like Sora 2, Veo 3, Runway Gen-4, Pika, Kling, and Luma went from demos to real production work. Cinematic shots, built-in audio, and characters that stay consistent, all from a single prompt.

That brings you the hard questions: authenticity, consent, and manipulation. Deepfakes are harder to spot. Rules are lagging. Soon, anyone will be able to fabricate a “real” scene on demand.

By 2026, we won’t be debating which model wins. We’ll be dealing with what this does to trust, jobs, and who gets to shape reality.

Economic impact
↳ Generative AI expected to lift global GDP growth by 1.5+ percentage points by 2035
↳ Data-center electricity demand could double to ~945 TWh by 2030

Work changes
↳ WEF Future of Jobs 2025: 92 million roles displaced, 170 million created by 2030
↳ ~30% of jobs at high automation risk; up to 60% significantly reshaped

Healthcare gains
↳ AI diagnostics now match specialist-level accuracy in oncology, cardiology, radiology
↳ Cancer detection pushing into the mid-90% accuracy range

Social shifts
↳ Tailored experiences are becoming the default across retail, finance, media, healthcare
↳ Deepfake videos projected to reach millions yearly

Planetary pressure
↳ Data centers are becoming a central climate issue
↳ Green AI data centers projected to double in market size by 2035

Time compression
AI is compressing 50–100 years of medical and biological progress into 5–10 years.

My takeaway: 

So yes, there are huge gains in speed, output, and care. And there are real risks around jobs, trust, and energy.

Leading through this with ethics and human dignity isn’t a niche job anymore. 

We spent decades asking what AI can do.

A better question: what should humans never stop doing?

Follow me, Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld for more to help leaders to map a future where progress means more humanity.

♻️ Repost to help more people understand AI's dual nature.

The tiger awakens: Thanks for creating this animation for me—by the amazing  Tim Gray!

A restaurant threw out 3 grams of shell. Engineers turned it into a robot that lifts 680 grams.

Think about that.

Millions of tons of crustacean shells end up in landfills every year. Leftover langoustine tails stripped for meat, headed for the bin.

One lab at EPFL in Switzerland asked a different question.

What robotics usually needs:
 ↳ Expensive engineered composites
 ↳ Complex manufacturing
 ↳ Materials that end up as e-waste
 ↳ Designs that fight against flexibility

What Josie Hughes' CREATE Lab built instead:
 ↳ Robotic actuators from discarded langoustine exoskeletons
 ↳ 3 grams of shell lifting over 200× its own weight
 ↳ 8 bending cycles per second—fast enough for real gripping
 ↳ Swimming robots reaching 10–11 cm/s in water
 ↳ Grippers strong enough to pick up a tomato or a pen

The reason it works? Nature already solved the engineering.

Crustacean shells merge hard plates with flexible joints. That combination of stiffness and flexibility is nearly impossible to replicate with synthetic materials. The segmented geometry allows rapid, high-torque motion—exactly what you need for grasping and swimming.

Here's the part that stopped me:

When the device is done, the biological shell biodegrades. The motors and elastomers get reused. Circular design, built into the system from day one.

Lead author Sareum Kim calls it the first proof of concept that directly integrates food waste into a working robot while embracing reuse and recycling.

They call the field "necrobotics"—dead biological structures engineered into functional machines. No temperature control. No nutrients. No sterile environments. Just kitchen waste becoming high-performance hardware.

The ripple effect:
 1 lab proves shells can power robots
 10 teams replicating means it's real
 100 applications means agriculture, monitoring, low-cost automation all get cheaper, greener options
 At scale = robotics stops creating waste and starts using it

Picture a farmer in a remote region. A low-cost gripper—built from shells that would've rotted—sorting produce. No expensive imports. No e-waste when it breaks down. Just a tool that came from the earth and returns to it.

We spent decades engineering materials from scratch.

This team asked a simpler question: what if the best actuator was already sitting in the trash?

Follow me, Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld, for stories where waste becomes wonder.

♻️ Share if you think the best engineering sometimes starts in the trash.

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