mural art competition

PROGENY • The 21st century has seen an unprecedented proliferation of electronic devices, sharply altering the world economic map and human sociological behavior, while creating socioeconomic and environmental burdens in form of massive electronic wastes. Not only does e-waste contain hazardous amounts of toxic substances such as lead, cadmium, mercury, polychlorinated biphenyls, and brominated flame-retardants, but its informal disposal and low technology recycling generates additional toxic pollutants, and heavy metals. Clearly, the electronic industry is indispensable but unsustainable, demanding immediate sustainable innovations - both in materials and in device design. • Within a century of fascinating progress in electronics, viable proton-based devices are yet to be developed, although nature has given us efficient and intrinsically sustainable biological systems that are fundamentally protonic. • Recently, micro electronic devices are being developed for bio-electronic medicine, sensing, prosthetics and augmented biological perceptions. There are critical challenges in these devices concerning their effectiveness, and compatibility with living systems where intra-system communication is protonic /ionic (in contrast to electronic). Taking a cue from recent advances in organic electronic and protonic devices, we target for the first time, a radical, foundational and sustainable breakthrough in device & sensor innovation, exploiting unique properties of designer soap films as advanced functional materials in proto-opto-electro-mechanical systems (POEMS).

The Mural Should Convey the Following:

1. PROGENY project is working on using soap bubbles/films for developing high tech sensors and devices based on controlled conduction of protons and ions in contrast to only electrons.
2. Electronic waste is a serious ecological and human health hazard that no one talks about.
3. There is power in simplicity of a soap bubble: Its molecular architecture is profound.
4. All forms are temporary like a soap bubble but the temporal nature of forms is their strength as they can alter and mutate into evolved forms as parts of a holistic system.
5. The project is funded by the prestigious EU Innovation Council Pathfinder grant and there are 8 leading European organizations in the consortium working on the project from 6 EU countries.