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The activities shed light on a project that received EU funding to examine ways of accelerating the transition to climate neutrality in nine waterfront cities across Europe. Called Re-Value, it runs for four years through 2026. 

The project is drawing inspiration from the New European Bauhaus (NEB) initiative to make everyday living in Europe more sustainable, inclusive and attractive. 

"NEB can be a shortcut to working together faster and better," says Koen Timmerman, a policy officer at the City of Bruges. "NEB can be an extra gear in our city’s transition to climate neutrality."

The EU organised an NEB festival in Brussels on April 9-13.

The eight other cities in Re-Value are Ålesund in Norway, Burgas in Bulgaria, Cascais in Portugal, Constanța in Romania, Izmir in Turkey, Písek in the Czech Republic, Rimini in Italy and Rijeka in Croatia.

The project highlights particular challenges – and opportunities – for urban areas that border oceans, seas or rivers. An estimated 40% of people in the EU live in such locations.

On-stage inspiration 

"It’s really about engaging people for climate-neutral cities," says Annemie Wyckmans, who leads Re-Value and is a professor of sustainable architecture at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim.

In Ålesund, a theatre group is working with local authorities to spur public debate about tackling environmental threats including biodiversity loss and climate change.

 

'It’s really about engaging people.' Professor Annemie Wyckmans, Re-Value

The troupe, Teatret Vårt, has performed an experimental play about what scientists warn is the world’s sixth mass extinction. Unlike the five earlier die-offs, including the most recent one 65 million years ago that killed off dinosaurs, the current mass extinction is driven primarily by human activity including land, water and energy use and pollution.

The theatrical work is called A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction by US dramatist Miranda Rose Hall and serves as the starting point for an audience discussion about topics brought up during the show.

The one-woman play centres on a character who works behind the scenes at a theatre company and is forced to fill in by herself on stage for two absent actors in a performance about the climate crisis. Human interconnectedness and engagement are prime themes. 

"Hopefully the project will give people – both professionals and inhabitants – the confidence to take an active part in developing solutions to create a better life," says Prof Wyckmans.

Teatret Vårt has a connection to all nine cities in Re-Value by having performed A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction in each of them. 

The shows have prompted audience members to talk and think about the future and what they can do to help shape it, according to Prof Wyckmans.

"We do this exercise with people: if you close your eyes and you imagine, what would 2030 look like?" she says. "If you just think of your own neighbourhood, what do you do? How do you live? What about your family and friends? What does it smell like in terms of air quality?"

Lake of Love

In Bruges, action is accompanying the talking and thinking.

The city administration will move into a sprawling red-brick structure that was built in a neo-Gothic style in the late 19th century and once served as a hospice for vulnerable and incurably ill women before becoming a retirement home. 

The building, which runs the length of a whole street block, is named after the nearby Lake of Love – Huize Minnewater in Flemish. The move may take place in 2027 after a renovation that is still being prepared. 

"The renovation should not only be sustainable and beautiful – it should at the same time be an inspiring and motivating place where we can build together our Bruges of tomorrow," says Timmerman. 

The planned connection between the city centre and the harbour is a joint collaboration among local authorities, cultural organisations, craft makers and food producers.

It involves regenerating the Quay District in line with NEB principles. That means making optimum use of space by all actors and encouraging sustainable activities. 

Urban forest

Much farther south, on the Adriatic coast, Rimini is using nature-based solutions to climate stress by creating two parks: the seafront Parco del Mare and the riverfront Parco Marecchia. The goal is to renaturalise a heavily urbanised land. 

On the seafront, the city has removed a road to create a green area for pedestrians with a wide array of plants and trees. The vegetation includes the Lippia nodiflora plant that needs relatively little water and trees such as stone pine and evergreen oak that are salt-tolerant. The layout of the trees maximises shade and the park acts as a barrier against coastal flooding.

In part of the seafront park, which is due to be completed in June this year, the city is building a sustainable stormwater-drainage system. Rather than being piped into a sewer network, the park’s drainage system will feed into the ground below through the use of permeable materials, avoiding sewage overflows into the sea.

Separately in Rimini, a local volunteer group asked and received permission from the municipality to convert an area around an old hotel into a garden and playground. 

"We created Re-Value exactly to be able to support these kinds of initiatives," says Wyckmans. "It was so inspiring."

Coastal communities

Another EU-funded project is working with communities in coastal cities to develop NEB-inspired moves towards climate neutrality.

 

'We need to inspire people.' Professor Nuno Jardim Nunes, BoSS

Called Bauhaus of the Seas Sails, or BoSS, the three-year project runs until the end of 2025. 

It focuses on different coastal ecosystems in six EU countries: Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden. 

The lessons learnt will help inform other cities across Europe in a bid to inspire them to reproduce the most successful initiatives. 

"Our goal is to bring the principles of the New European Bauhaus – beautiful, sustainable, together – to our coastal cities," says Nuno Jardim Nunes, a professor of human-computer interaction at the Technical University of Lisbon in Portugal and coordinator of BoSS. 

Lisbon lessons

In Lisbon, the project’s attention is on food and sustainability. 

The researchers are working with city residents, chefs and schools to design menus that integrate materials and resources from the Tagus estuary to make diets more local and sustainable. 

"We need to urgently connect the policies of sustainability and ocean preservation to ensure we don’t endanger these very fragile areas," says Prof Jardim Nunes. 

The project is also looking in Lisbon at river and ocean materials such as algae, shells and flotsam that could be used for furniture or construction materials. 

The emphasis is on small-scale initiatives to see whether they could be scaled up eventually to build structures like houses. 

Prof Jardim Nunes, who was raised on the Madeira islands and inspired by the sea from an early age, says that different generations and cultures need to work together to address the climate crisis. 

Elsewhere in the project, Malmö in Sweden is converting former docks into a sustainable living and working district, Venice in Italy is seeking to reconnect senior citizens to its lagoon and Hamburg in northern Germany is promoting education about the sea. 

"To bring about change, we need to inspire people and give them hope," says Prof Jardim Nunes. "BoSS is trying to achieve practical, small examples of how this could work at scale." 

This article was written by Karen McHugh and first appeared in Horizon magazine.

AIPSS is part of a research project that received EU funding to develop a better way for detecting the onset of mental and physical fatigue in drivers. Called FITDRIVE, the project runs for three-and-a-half years until the end of February 2025.

The FITDRIVE team, led by the ITCL Technology Centre in Spain, is building technology integrated into the car’s software that will send customised alerts to drivers when they should pay more attention to the road or even take a break.

"We observe the physiological status of a driver," says Polidori. "We look at when a driver is fit to drive and take action when they’re not."

While existing technology in the field can send alerts when people stray from a lane or drive erratically, it is mostly onboard software that isn’t customised for each driver.

Road tests

Driver fatigue is a contributing factor in 15% to 20% of serious road crashes, the European Road Safety Observatory said in a 2021 report.

 

'This system customises itself for each driver.' Carlo Polidori, FITDRIVE

About 20,400 people were killed in road accidents in the EU in 2023, according to the European Commission. While the figure represented a 1% decline compared with 2022, the commission said too few EU countries were on track to meet a target of halving road deaths by 2030. 

FITDRIVE is among a number of EU projects finding ways to bring down the number of road fatalities in Europe. Researchers believe that, with the right technology, people can be prodded into driving more safely.

The research challenge starts with the basics: knowing when exactly a driver is becoming tired. The FITDRIVE team is collecting this data through tests on groups of volunteers.

So far, the volunteers have driven a car simulator and ridden around on closed-off tracks in Italy and Spain under various weather conditions. Those tests took place in 2023.

Before the project wraps up, the plan is to conduct real world tests in Ireland, Italy and Spain.

The information collected during the first two sets of tests came from cameras watching the drivers’ faces and headsets to monitor brain waves.

The data will feed into an algorithm that, combined with an electronic bracelet, can detect when a driver is getting tired. The bracelet will monitor things like heart rate, arm-movement patterns and perspiration to note when a driver is becoming weary.

The algorithm will keep learning and adapting itself to each individual driver.

The system fine-tunes itself by continuously collecting data to build up a picture of each driver and assess risks during a particular driving session. In this way, it can detect individual cues of tiredness – such as when Polidori touches the back of his neck.

"That’s the big difference from existing systems to spot fatigue," he says. "This system customises itself for each driver. It can advise them of issues before they themselves realise it."

System upgrade

The current technologies that can recognise when a person is driving erratically or swerving from a lane are based on tests carried out on large numbers of volunteers and feature a one-size-fits-all algorithm for drivers.

Because everybody has a different driving style, these methods aren’t always accurate enough.

The project has 10 partners from seven countries including France, Germany, Spain and Sweden. Among the participants is Advanticsys, a Spanish company that specialises in sensors and software, and the European Driving Schools Association. 

The FITDRIVE technology might even be useful in self-driving cars, which for the foreseeable future will require passengers to supervise operations and be ready to take control if necessary.

For that to happen, a person in the vehicle needs to be alert at key moments rather than sleeping or reading. A system like FITDRIVE’s could be used in self-driving cars to monitor people inside and make sure they are alert enough to intervene.

Safer hauling

Helping to ensure that drivers of heavy-duty vehicles stay alert behind the wheel was the focus of another EU-funded project.

Called i-DREAMS, it wrapped up in April 2023 after four years and came up with a way to notify lorry drivers when they started driving in unsafe ways. Heavy-duty vehicles accounted for 14% of all road fatalities in the EU in 2020.

 

'We need to nudge the driver to drive more safely.' Professor Tom Brijs, i-DREAMS

The project brought together 13 partners from eight countries including Austria, Belgium, Greece, the Netherlands and Slovenia. It carried out tests on 600 drivers at sites in five nations.

Using data from the vehicles, the driver and the surrounding environment, the project team created a statistical measure of when a driver was in control and, if not, sent the person an audio alert via a smartphone app.

When a person drove too closely to the vehicle in front, particularly when the road was wet, a signal would be sent.

The app can also coach drivers to do better. During the project, points were awarded to test drivers based on how well they drove.

"The audio signals improved driving quality of test drivers," says Tom Brijs, who led i-DREAMS and is a professor in the department of traffic engineering at Hasselt University in Belgium. "Driving quality improved even further for those drivers who were coached in the app."

Insurance guarantee

The app is already being used by some businesses.

For example, an insurance company uses the app to monitor its insured lorry drivers – particularly at hauliers with poor reputations, according to Brijs.

Some companies, especially those with higher-than-average accident rates, have less access to affordable insurance.

The i-DREAMS app enables such hauliers to get insurance as long as all their drivers use the app.

Car manufacturers might also use this technology in future to check whether drivers using cruise control are really paying attention, particularly in dangerous conditions.

"We need to nudge the driver to drive more safely, particularly now that cars are becoming partly autonomous," says Brijs. 

This article was written by Tom Cassauwers and first appeared in Horizon magazine.

A group of researchers received EU funding to help tackle these three challenges and came up with the idea of using bauxite residue for the road at the Aughinish aluminium refinery. Their project, called RemovAL, ran for five years through April 2023. 

"Landfilling is a practice that we want to move away from," says Dr Efthymios Balomenos, who co-led the project."Even if there is zero harm to the environment, you are still using up lots of space and throwing away half your material."

Simple numbers show the test for industry and society: every tonne of aluminium produced results in about two tonnes of bauxite residue.

Each year, about 150 million tonnes of red mud worldwide emerges from aluminium production – or 20 kilogrammes per person globally. Of that total, no more than 3% is recycled and the rest gets dumped.

Globally, more than four billion tonnes of bauxite residue are in storage and the figure could more than double to 10 billion tonnes by 2050, according to the Aluminium Stewardship Initiative, a standards-setting organisation that is urging 'breakthrough solutions' for red mud.

Idea labs 

Bauxite is named after the French town of Les Baux where the ore was discovered in 1821. 

Europe produces about seven million tonnes of bauxite residue annually. The red mud gets piled up to create artificial hills, which offer the EU an opportunity to advance its goal of creating a circular economy involving more recycling and less waste.

 

'Our goal was to get to near break-even and near zero waste.' Dr Efthymios Balomenos, RemovAL

RemovAL featured a range of academic and industrial participants including Aughinish Alumina, Rio Tinto in France and Greek mining and metallurgy company Mytilineos.

The project ran demonstrations at industrial sites in Germany, Greece and Ireland, testing ideas for potential commercial uses of bauxite residue.

The prime aims were to reduce waste and do so in a way that avoided big extra costs.

"Our goal was to get to near break-even and near zero waste," says Dr Balomenos, who is a consultant at Mytilineos.

Roads ahead

The RemovAL team demonstrated that bauxite residue can be used as the first foundation layer, or subbase, for roads.

Usually made from low-grade crushed stone, the subbase of a road lies on the ground and provides a stable platform for the next, higher-quality foundation layer. 

At the Aughinish refinery, the bauxite residue was laid, compressed and levelled with standard road-building equipment.

Since being constructed, the road has been monitored for more than a year to show that no chemicals seep out.

RemovAL also showed that useful materials can be extracted from bauxite residue, boosting EU efforts to reduce reliance on foreign suppliers of essential industrial commodities. 

Typically, bauxite residue is about two-fifths iron oxide, one-fifth aluminium oxide, 6% silica and 5% titanium. Red mud even contains rare earths – a group of 17 metallic elements with special properties that facilitate technological advances in a range of industries.

"It’s a lot of material, even if you just look at it as a potential iron source," says Dr Balomenos.

At the sites in Greece and Norway, the project smelted bauxite residue in an electric arc furnace to produce an iron alloy suitable for use in the manufacturing of steel. 

RemovAL also extracted the rare earth scandium, used in the aerospace industry for ensuring strength and corrosion resistance in components.

After this, the remaining residue was used to create material that can be added to the mix for cement.

While the demonstrations were a technical success, Dr Balomenos says cost hurdles remain – mostly because the options for reusing bauxite residue are less profitable than using locally sourced ‘virgin’ raw materials.

"In the end, landfilling is the only financially viable option for the industry," he says.

Dr Balomenos says that, to green the aluminium sector, Europe will need to offer incentives such as subsidies or regulations to encourage the use of bauxite residue and other metallurgical by-products over newly mined raw materials.

More metals

The metals-waste challenge in Europe extends well beyond aluminium. 

Other EU-backed researchers, grouped under a project called NEMO, sought to find commercial uses for stockpiles of waste that result from the mining of copper, zinc, lead and nickel.

 

'Acid mine drainage is one of the most important problems.' Dr Peter Tom Jones, NEMO

Europe has an estimated 28 billion tonnes of ore residues known as tailings from the past production of these metals, with a further 600 million tonnes being produced every year.

Copper, zinc, lead and nickel are vital for powering Europe’s green transition. Without them, wind turbines, electric vehicles and many other clean technologies would be impossible.

But the tailings have an environmental footprint of their own. This waste is often left in tailing ponds, contains sulphur and – when exposed to rain – produces sulphuric acid. 

"This sulphuric acid can start leaching out potentially hazardous elements to the environment, soil and water," says Dr Peter Tom Jones, director of the KU Leuven Institute for Sustainable Metals and Minerals in Belgium. "Acid mine drainage is one of the most important problems with the mining industry when dealing with sulphidic ores."

Promising technique

Dr Jones was part of NEMO, which ended in November 2022 after four-and-a-half years.

The researchers used sites in Finland and Ireland to test the feasibility of a technique known as bioleaching to remove valuable metals from mine tailings and convert the remaining waste into a material that not only is safer but also could act as an additive in cement manufacturing.

Valuable metals can already be recovered from tailings through a process called leaching. Chemicals, usually acids, are used to dissolve the metals and leach them out of the waste so that they can be recovered.

While similar to chemical leaching, bioleaching gets living organisms to do the work. Microbes feed on elements in the mine waste and then create an acidic environment that dissolves the metals. 

The process has the potential to be cheaper and more effective than chemical leaching.

The researchers demonstrated that bioleaching is a feasible way to recover metals like nickel from tailings. And the metal quality would be good enough for, say, battery production.

They also found that, with extra recovery processes, bioleaching could extract valuable rare earths from certain mining waste.

Furthermore, after bioleaching, the waste was less acidic and could be transformed into an additive for cement mixes.

Cost questions

But as with the RemovAL team, the NEMO researchers found that these processes are too costly at present to be commercially appealing.

"It’s one thing to develop the technology to convert tailings into recovered metals and construction materials," says Dr Jones. "It is something completely different to do that in a way that is economically feasible."

He says that relatively low quantities of critical metals in the tailings mean operational costs tend to be higher than the potential revenue and that, as a result, mining raw materials is often a cheaper option, especially when done in low-cost countries where environmental, social and governance – ESG – standards are lower. 

Nonetheless, NEMO has helped produce technologies that point the way to the efficient recovery of metals from mined materials and that clean up waste.

With the right regulatory framework and incentives, bioleaching and similar emerging technologies could become more economical. Meanwhile, these processes can help Europe meet a goal to expand supplies of critical raw materials by clearing up tailings and improving ore extraction. 

This article was written by Michael Allen and first appeared in Horizon magazine.

The Naka structure, known as JT-60SA, is the outcome of an EU-Japan agreement from 2007 to develop fusion energy. It is the world’s most powerful tokamak and was inaugurated in December 2023 after almost a decade of construction. 

"JT-60SA coming into operation is a very important milestone," says Professor Ambrogio Fasoli, an Italian physics expert who leads a consortium that received EU funding to advance the prospects for commercial energy from fusion.

Called EUROfusion, the partnership brings together about 170 laboratories and industrial partners from 29 countries. The participants are contributing hardware and personnel to JT-60SA. 

Fusion-energy reactors like JT-60SA replicate processes that occur in the sun and other stars. By fusing hydrogen atoms to create helium and one neutron releasing energy in the form of heat, they have the potential to generate a safe, clean and almost inexhaustible source of power.

Not fission

Fusion is the reverse of fission, the process at the heart of traditional nuclear power stations. While fission involves the division of a heavy atom into two light atoms, fusion combines two light atoms to form a larger one.

 

'We managed to produce the biggest volume of plasma ever in such a device.' Guy Phillips, Fusion for Energy

Unlike fission, fusion produces no long-lived nuclear waste and presents no risk of a meltdown or chain reaction.

Research into fusion began in the 1920s when a British astrophysicist named Arthur Eddington linked the energy of stars to the fusion of hydrogen into helium.

A century later, as climate change intensifies and countries worldwide seek alternatives to fossil fuels that cause it, the lure of fusion is as strong as ever.

But significant obstacles remain. They include the technical challenges of building reactors whose walls won’t melt from the extreme heat inside, finding the best mixes of materials for fusion production and limiting irradiation of materials inside the reactor. 

New No 1

European energy commissioner Kadri Simson took part in the inauguration of JT-60SA in Naka five months ago.

The €600m reactor was built jointly by an EU organisation called Fusion for Energy, or F4E, and Japan’s National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology, also known as QST. 

When it was declared active, JT-60SA claimed the title of largest tokamak from a 40-year-old facility in the UK called Joint European Torus, or JET.

JT-60SA will feature up to 41 megawatts of heating power compared with 38MW for JET.

"We turned the machine on and it works," says Guy Phillips, head of unit for JT-60SA at F4E. "We managed to produce the biggest volume of plasma ever in such a device, which is a great achievement. But this was just the first step and we still have a lot of work to do."

Stepping stone

JT-60SA will inform work on the next planned tokamak: ITER, the world’s largest fusion experiment.

Double the size of JT-60SA, ITER is being built on a 180-hectare site in southern France.

F4E manages Europe’s contribution to ITER, which brings together 33 countries, as well as to JT-60SA, whose planned lifespan is about 20 years.

With confirmation that JT-60SA’s core systems work, the reactor will enter a planned shutdown for two to three years while an external heating-power system is added and other ones are upgraded.

"When we start the next operational phase, we will then be able to go a lot further with plasma production and understanding different configurations," says Phillips.

Knowledge build-up

Continuity is a strong feature of fusion research. 

 

'We need everybody to work together.' Professor Ambrogio Fasoli, EUROfusion

Before turning their attention to JT-60SA, EUROfusion researchers worked on JET.

That facility broke its own record for the largest amount of energy produced by a fusion-energy reactor before the final experiments were carried out there and it was shut down in December 2023.

Measuring 69 megajoules in a 5.2-second burst, the energy was estimated to be enough to power 12,000 homes.

"The fusion energy record at JET is an incredibly strong reminder of how well we now master fusion reactions on Earth," says Prof Fasoli.

View ahead

Given the importance of know-how in the field, both EUROfusion and F4E run programmes to get future generations of scientists interested and trained in fusion.

Two factors holding back interest in fusion by some young researchers are a lack of immediate results in the field and an indirect – as well as unjustified – stigma linked to nuclear fission, according to Prof Fasoli.

"This is a transgenerational effort," he says. "There’s a need for education, training and structures that can keep people who are interested."

European commissioner for innovation, research, culture, education and youth Iliana Ivanova said at a March 2024 event with industry representatives that collaboration between private and public entities in the field of fusion is essential to accelerate the demonstration of fusion-electricity generation.

The goal is to involve bigger industrial stakeholders as well as startups in the transition from laboratory to fabrication – so-called lab to fab. 

That means combining the private sector’s entrepreneurship and industrial capability with the ambition and realism of the public sector, according to Prof Fasoli.

He says that fusion energy could become a reality by the 2050s. 

"As long as we all row in the same direction, I think that horizon is still reasonable," says Prof Fasoli. "It means we need everybody to work together." 

This article was written by Gareth Willmer and first appeared in Horizon magazine.

The idea for her biotech startup, called OncoSwab, was born in September 2022 at an EU event for talented young researchers. Aptly named EU TalentOn, it was held in the Dutch city of Leiden over five days.

The event placed 104 participants from around Europe into teams and challenged them to come up with the best scientific answers to pressing societal challenges including soil pollution, climate change and cancer.

In short, EU TalentOn sought young people who wanted to change the world. Diaz applied and won an invitation, attending through the final two days on the weekend of September 17-18.

"I had this huge desire to impact patients’ lives," she says. "My life changed after that weekend. My life is before EU TalentOn and after EU TalentOn."

Road to success

Lung cancer is often diagnosed late, helping make it the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Smoking is the main cause.

 

'I had this huge desire to impact patients’ lives.' Andrea Stephany Diaz, OncoSwab

Diaz’s professional path to fighting cancer is far from direct.

She moved from Venezuela to Madrid at the age of 12. Following a degree in biochemistry from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, she began a master’s in molecular biotechnology in the city and worked as a research assistant focusing in part on regenerating blood vessels after stroke.

After joining a German biotech company in Hamburg that developed stem cells for medical research, Diaz began working for herself on science-communication projects.

At the same time, she regularly jotted down notes on her phone about business ideas and opportunities that caught her attention in daily life.

Talent time

Then came EU TalentOn.

With a vivacious personality and love of talking, Diaz was chosen at the event to present her team’s idea in the beating-cancer category: what if a Covid-like test for lung cancer could be created? The team won the award for best pitch. 

But something else happened: Diaz met like-minded people and – most significantly – Dr Pablo Lara, a cancer scientist from Leiden University.

She also encountered others who mentored her.

"I was hungry to create something innovative and, after the TalentOn, I literally couldn’t sleep thinking about the problem of lung-cancer diagnosis," says Diaz. "Pablo had the same feeling and we immediately started talking almost every day."

She describes Lara as a typical genius scientist who comes up with ideas and experiments. 

Partnership drive

The partnership proved invaluable to bring her dream of starting a company closer to reality. Still, getting the business off the ground was a tough effort well into 2023.

"It was just me and Pablo," says Diaz. "Those first months were absolutely the worst. We were called crazy. For six to eight months, we kept getting rejected from everywhere." 

They stuck with it and eventually founded OncoSwab, received funding and began moving their lung-cancer screening idea forward. 

Now, they’re working with lung doctors in the Netherlands, Switzerland and the US to detect lung cancer from nasal swabs. This may determine whether a patient requires a more complex computed tomography, or CT, scan. 

"Our goal is to really make lung-cancer detection as widespread as breast-cancer screening," says Diaz.

She declined to comment on the company’s technique because it is at the pre-commercial stage.

Now a Spanish citizen, Stephany Diaz feels a sense of both urgency and fulfilment in her current work. 

"I literally feel like I use every corner of my brain in my company and every skillset that I have," she says. "I get to be creative if a problem comes up and brainstorm with my team."

Stephany Diaz spoke at the European Research and Innovation – R&I – Days in Brussels recently and said she’s drawn to such occasions.  

"I love to talk to others, I love to network, I love to meet people and I love to listen to other people’s stories," she says. "And it turns out that’s somehow part of my job now." 

Author: Anthony King. This article first appeared in Horizon magazine.