Knowledge-based platform inside Austrian Pavilion a key attraction

Women play a decisive role in shaping the world and can bring about positive changes with their innovative and creative solutions to the problems of our age. The achievements of female entrepreneurs and researchers who contribute to the transformation to a green, liveable, sustainable future will therefore be given special recognition at the world exhibition in Dubai.

“Women and their innovative power are sending a strong message at Expo 2020 in Dubai. It is our goal to inspire more women and girls to take up STEM professions (mathematics, IT, science and technology) and to get them into technical training schemes. Strong female role models show that women can achieve anything, also on an international stage,” says Minister of Digital and Economic Affairs Margarete Schramböck.

The 52 companies and research institutes presenting their developments and products in the iLab — the knowledge platform inside the Austria Pavilion — boast strong female participation. Their projects prove that women not only provide a breath of fresh air in research, but above all deliver important input and outstanding results. They make a decisive contribution to advancing innovation in Austria and on the world stage.

Livin Farms is a Vienna and Hong-Kong-based start-up that works towards a sustainable and circular food system. The key to this is mealworms. Project Manager Valerija Volcic: “With the Hive Explorer, a circular economy is created and put into practice by feeding mealworms with food waste and in turn utilising the mealworms as protein, and the mealworm droppings as plant fertiliser.” Livin Farms thinks big and sees opportunities to improve our food systems everywhere - in households, schools, business and industry.

Fashion & Technology is a bachelor’s and master’s degree programme for forward-looking, sustainable and inclusive fashion design at the University of Art and Design Linz that combines design and research. Ute Ploier, Head of the Fashion & Technology programme, takes a surprising look at sustainable, inclusive and democratic future of fashion in her project IN THE LAB.

“With its inhumane and environmentally-destructive production methods, ‘fast fashion’ has long since gone beyond all limits of decency. Fashion & Technology counters the fashion system with new, sustainable alternative processes”, she says.

Fashion & Technology explores the question of how traditional systems in fashion can be rethought in terms of design strategies and production methods.

The Vienna-based family business of Dorothea Sulzbacher and Thomas Eichenauer, Lite-Soil, develops and produces innovative, geotextile-based water storage nets and strips. Once laid in the soil, these “artificial water veins” provide sustainable irrigation. The systems are used on lawns, sports grounds and embankments and for the greening of deserts. Lite-Soil water storage and irrigation systems bring air and water straight to the roots of the plant and store it there. “Saving water and re-vegetation remain the top priority in the fight against climate change. “Our products make it possible to save up to 70 per cent of the increasingly precious resource water”, says Dorothea Sulzbacher. Lite-Soil products are also being used at the Expo in Dubai.

GREENPASS — enabling liveable cities is the first all-in-one SaaS planning, optimisation and certification tool for climate-resilient urban planning & architecture that can be used internationally. The goal of the Vienna-based company that was founded in 2018 as a spin-off of the research institute Green4Cities, is to create climate-resilient and liveable cities across the world and to cool them by up to 4 degrees centigrade.

The complementary team of GREENPASS includes several women who bring many years of experience, expertise and a lot of passion to the project. Lisa Maria Enzenhofer, a landscape architect and expert in climate-friendly design, is also a partner in the GREENPASS project, providing advice and support.