[Music]
I’ve always loved numbers mathematical
formulas and seeing and sometimes almost
believing in connections and patterns
and data I guess that’s how the
constellations came about some thousand
years ago
our ancestors looked up at the night sky
and saw all these stars shining back at
them and they tried to find patterns
among the random dots as a young girl I
loved looking up at the sky at night and
doing just that but I want to understand
even more what is a star and why are
some of these shining dots only planets
and why are some whole galaxies and why
do they look almost the same to us on
earth I wanted to understand the
fundamentals of the universe and I felt
as if math and physics was almost like a
religion to me in some ways I guess it
was no surprise to my parents when I
ended up studying physics and eventually
continued with a PhD in particle physics
at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland at
CERN I felt like I finally have found
their place in the world where I
belonged where my friends and colleagues
share the same passion as me for math
physics and data the Atlas experiment at
CERN which I was a part of processes
data from the Large Hadron Collider at
the rate of half a billion proton-proton
collisions per second that is really big
data and everything else seems like tiny
data to me in comparison particle
physicists must apply smart techniques
in filtering the interesting collision
events and finally they must apply
advanced statistical programming tools
when they want to extract a very very
small signal of interest
among all that collision noise signal of
interest for me when I continue doing
research at CERN after my PhD was the
Higgs boson journalists like to call it
the god particle
maybe because physicists talk about it’s
almost in a religious manner when they
explained that the Higgs boson was the
last missing piece of the puzzle and
mapping out the standard model of
particle physics that describes the most
fundamental building blocks of our
it was during summer of 2012 when we
finally had enough data to either
exclude or confirm the existence of the
Higgs particle at the moment of
unveiling the analysis a few of my
colleagues and I went into the CERN
cafeteria to take a sneak peek of the
results before presenting it to the
entire team and I will never forget the
moment when I saw the results the Higgs
was there it was so beautifully obvious
a few of us then also stayed up that
entire night has turned to write up the
paper to have it ready already the next
day and I don’t think anything will ever
beat that feeling as I biked home that
summer morning after the most exciting
24 hours of my life was almost like
being high on something I guess I was
high on endorphines err yeah we didn’t
know it then but we did suspect it that
this would lead to Nobel Prize in
Physics for the theoreticians who had
predicted the Higgs existence and that
already happened the following year and
that’s of course super exciting but I
still often get the question so what how
does the Higgs discovery improve my
daily life and although they have a
valid point I do think that they
underestimate the importance of
understanding the data of our world
keeping investing in fundamental
research
to accelerate knowledge for the longer
future is key otherwise technology and
the development of society and an even
culture will stagnate at some point just
try to imagine if the electron had never
been discovered in the first place three
weeks after the Higgs discovery the
endorphin levels went back to normal and
I started questioning what to do next
the experiment was shutting down for a
couple of years for an upgrade and after
that we’ll ever be able to be part of
something this great again in particle
physics a month after the Higgs
discovery it was also time for our
wedding and the honeymoon that fall get
time for reflection for the first time
in really long we knew we wanted to get
pregnant in a year or two and I
therefore stopped using hormonal
contraception to give my body a chance
to get back to normal first my search
for natural contraceptive methods I
found that actually the body temperature
changes throughout the menstrual cycle
something well known and and very much
researched I started analyzing my own
temperature data and applying my
statistical knowledge from particle
physics to detect ovulation and pinpoint
the fertile days this was really a
revelation for me and of course got more
and more obsessed with my data and and
understanding how my body works
I of course showed my data to my
colleagues at CERN and some of my female
colleagues also started measuring their
temperature in the morning such that I
could analyze their data and inform them
of their fertility my husband who is
also a physicist suggested that we
should take this fertility algorithm and
make it into an app such that all women
and couples could actually profit from
this animation I thought that that’s a
really interesting and and really great
idea actually something I could do
myself
it was 2012 and I thought that learning
how to code an app must be useful for
the future so I quit my job in research
and I locked myself into our apartment
for well about a year to finish the
algorithm and develop the application
itself one appealing part of it was that
this would have an impact on people’s
lives well women’s lives already from
the first day studies have shown that
more and more women become aware and how
hormonal contraception impacts their
health and often quit using
contraception altogether we thought that
we could help these women by providing
them a natural alternative we also
realized that they would probably even
larger impact in the developing world as
there are hormonal contraception is not
always culturally accepted or even
available in some parts according to the
whu-oh about 90 million out of the 210
million pregnancies per year are
unintended that’s close to half when
talking to some of our very first users
of the app I quickly discovered that it
wasn’t only me or scientists in general
who felt empowered by getting a full
understanding and control of their
bodies topics such as menstruation PMS
fertility have been taboo for so long
that it has led to ignorant and agony
among women it doesn’t help that many
women are put to artificial state of
infertility by the pill from teenage
years until it’s time to have children
which becomes progressively later in our
Western society if we could only have
the information in our hands to fully
understand our bodies because then we
could make proper educated
voices around that information the
feedback we get from our users today is
rarely about the app itself but they
rather had described how the algorithm
has helped them understand their bodies
and how that empowers them seeing how my
innovation has improved women’s lives
empowers me but also humbles me at the
same time we have faced and we are still
facing a surprising amount of skepticism
I guess I was maybe a bit naive at first
when I thought that well as long as I do
something good for the world and I think
I did when I developed an effective
okay well I thought that everything will
be smooth sailing from there I didn’t
really think about what a highly
protected and regulated space I was
entering into I mean don’t get me wrong
I I do understand why one has to be
careful with innovation when it comes to
health and contraception and why some
are skeptical of what we do but the
criticism we get is not based on facts
and usually does not consider what is
best for women I think when it comes to
contraception it’s important to increase
choice as one method does not fit all
women and also not necessarily
throughout her fertile lifetime the
critics also often underestimate women’s
intelligence by insinuating that the
method is too complicated for younger
women to handle and I wonder why why are
people not comfortable with the women
having the information in their hands
that they need to be in control of their
own bodies the best ammunition against
the skeptics is the data that we have we
have today to published three clinical
studies together with the leading
experts in the field of contraception
the last study is the largest
prospective study ever performed on
natural contraception and shows from
data on more than 22,000 women that the
effectiveness of the method is
comparable to that of the pill but
without any side effects or health risks
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
thank you the data also shows that the
youngest user group women in the early
20s have a lower rate of unintended
pregnancy than women in their 30s this
is rarely seen on my other contraceptive
methods as younger women are more
fertile on average it’s because the app
is indeed just a tool that women can use
how they see fit this younger women have
a stronger wish to avoid pregnancy they
are actually better at protecting
themselves from their fertile so the
data shows that these young women can
very much handle the data on their own
bodies and they should not be
underestimated it’s also very much
thanks to the data that we have in the
clinical studies we perform that their
app is the first ever to be certified as
a contraceptive it is now a medical
device from the same regulatory risk
class as the condom and this is a huge
milestone not only for us or our users
but for health applications in general
as it is now possible for an algorithm
to replace a pharmaceutical drug I will
never finish
I think is incredibly cool what rather
simple data like a woman’s body
temperature can tell us I mean the fact
that temperature shows when a woman
ovulates
unlocks a wide range of possible
insights I mean obviously when she’s
first dollar when when she isn’t which
is important for contraception but it
also shows if she’s likely to be less
fertile in general and might need
external help conceiving it can also
tell her exactly when her PMS is coming
or maybe if she’s approaching menopause
but the temperature also tells other
stories how is the thyroid functioning
does she maybe have hypothyroidism which
can make it more likely to have a
miscarriage and in general is more
difficult to conceive we can sometimes
even see in the temperature data of a
pregnant woman if her hormone levels are
dropping and she needs medication to
prevent a miscarriage from happening the
temperature data also shows if you have
a temporary infection in your body which
could be an early sign of certain
cancers a whole new world of
possibilities open more and more
startups and therefore also investments
go into health tech med tech and FEM
tech and I think what we should strive
for together is to get the complete
understanding of our bodies this
knowledge would allow for better
decision makings and preventative
actions instead of the current system of
detecting and treating already existing
health issues every person is unique and
only when we have a full understanding
on a personal level
can we take proper actions I think the
future is very exciting as the
possibilities are really endless
due to the data-driven insights still to
come thank [Applause]
I’ve always loved numbers mathematical
formulas and seeing and sometimes almost
believing in connections and patterns
and data I guess that’s how the
constellations came about some thousand
years ago
our ancestors looked up at the night sky
and saw all these stars shining back at
them and they tried to find patterns
among the random dots as a young girl I
loved looking up at the sky at night and
doing just that but I want to understand
even more what is a star and why are
some of these shining dots only planets
and why are some whole galaxies and why
do they look almost the same to us on
earth I wanted to understand the
fundamentals of the universe and I felt
as if math and physics was almost like a
religion to me in some ways I guess it
was no surprise to my parents when I
ended up studying physics and eventually
continued with a PhD in particle physics
at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland at
CERN I felt like I finally have found
their place in the world where I
belonged where my friends and colleagues
share the same passion as me for math
physics and data the Atlas experiment at
CERN which I was a part of processes
data from the Large Hadron Collider at
the rate of half a billion proton-proton
collisions per second that is really big
data and everything else seems like tiny
data to me in comparison particle
physicists must apply smart techniques
in filtering the interesting collision
events and finally they must apply
advanced statistical programming tools
when they want to extract a very very
small signal of interest
among all that collision noise signal of
interest for me when I continue doing
research at CERN after my PhD was the
Higgs boson journalists like to call it
the god particle
maybe because physicists talk about it’s
almost in a religious manner when they
explained that the Higgs boson was the
last missing piece of the puzzle and
mapping out the standard model of
particle physics that describes the most
fundamental building blocks of our
it was during summer of 2012 when we
finally had enough data to either
exclude or confirm the existence of the
Higgs particle at the moment of
unveiling the analysis a few of my
colleagues and I went into the CERN
cafeteria to take a sneak peek of the
results before presenting it to the
entire team and I will never forget the
moment when I saw the results the Higgs
was there it was so beautifully obvious
a few of us then also stayed up that
entire night has turned to write up the
paper to have it ready already the next
day and I don’t think anything will ever
beat that feeling as I biked home that
summer morning after the most exciting
24 hours of my life was almost like
being high on something I guess I was
high on endorphines err yeah we didn’t
know it then but we did suspect it that
this would lead to Nobel Prize in
Physics for the theoreticians who had
predicted the Higgs existence and that
already happened the following year and
that’s of course super exciting but I
still often get the question so what how
does the Higgs discovery improve my
daily life and although they have a
valid point I do think that they
underestimate the importance of
understanding the data of our world
keeping investing in fundamental
research
to accelerate knowledge for the longer
future is key otherwise technology and
the development of society and an even
culture will stagnate at some point just
try to imagine if the electron had never
been discovered in the first place three
weeks after the Higgs discovery the
endorphin levels went back to normal and
I started questioning what to do next
the experiment was shutting down for a
couple of years for an upgrade and after
that we’ll ever be able to be part of
something this great again in particle
physics a month after the Higgs
discovery it was also time for our
wedding and the honeymoon that fall get
time for reflection for the first time
in really long we knew we wanted to get
pregnant in a year or two and I
therefore stopped using hormonal
contraception to give my body a chance
to get back to normal first my search
for natural contraceptive methods I
found that actually the body temperature
changes throughout the menstrual cycle
something well known and and very much
researched I started analyzing my own
temperature data and applying my
statistical knowledge from particle
physics to detect ovulation and pinpoint
the fertile days this was really a
revelation for me and of course got more
and more obsessed with my data and and
understanding how my body works
I of course showed my data to my
colleagues at CERN and some of my female
colleagues also started measuring their
temperature in the morning such that I
could analyze their data and inform them
of their fertility my husband who is
also a physicist suggested that we
should take this fertility algorithm and
make it into an app such that all women
and couples could actually profit from
this animation I thought that that’s a
really interesting and and really great
idea actually something I could do
myself
it was 2012 and I thought that learning
how to code an app must be useful for
the future so I quit my job in research
and I locked myself into our apartment
for well about a year to finish the
algorithm and develop the application
itself one appealing part of it was that
this would have an impact on people’s
lives well women’s lives already from
the first day studies have shown that
more and more women become aware and how
hormonal contraception impacts their
health and often quit using
contraception altogether we thought that
we could help these women by providing
them a natural alternative we also
realized that they would probably even
larger impact in the developing world as
there are hormonal contraception is not
always culturally accepted or even
available in some parts according to the
whu-oh about 90 million out of the 210
million pregnancies per year are
unintended that’s close to half when
talking to some of our very first users
of the app I quickly discovered that it
wasn’t only me or scientists in general
who felt empowered by getting a full
understanding and control of their
bodies topics such as menstruation PMS
fertility have been taboo for so long
that it has led to ignorant and agony
among women it doesn’t help that many
women are put to artificial state of
infertility by the pill from teenage
years until it’s time to have children
which becomes progressively later in our
Western society if we could only have
the information in our hands to fully
understand our bodies because then we
could make proper educated
voices around that information the
feedback we get from our users today is
rarely about the app itself but they
rather had described how the algorithm
has helped them understand their bodies
and how that empowers them seeing how my
innovation has improved women’s lives
empowers me but also humbles me at the
same time we have faced and we are still
facing a surprising amount of skepticism
I guess I was maybe a bit naive at first
when I thought that well as long as I do
something good for the world and I think
I did when I developed an effective
okay well I thought that everything will
be smooth sailing from there I didn’t
really think about what a highly
protected and regulated space I was
entering into I mean don’t get me wrong
I I do understand why one has to be
careful with innovation when it comes to
health and contraception and why some
are skeptical of what we do but the
criticism we get is not based on facts
and usually does not consider what is
best for women I think when it comes to
contraception it’s important to increase
choice as one method does not fit all
women and also not necessarily
throughout her fertile lifetime the
critics also often underestimate women’s
intelligence by insinuating that the
method is too complicated for younger
women to handle and I wonder why why are
people not comfortable with the women
having the information in their hands
that they need to be in control of their
own bodies the best ammunition against
the skeptics is the data that we have we
have today to published three clinical
studies together with the leading
experts in the field of contraception
the last study is the largest
prospective study ever performed on
natural contraception and shows from
data on more than 22,000 women that the
effectiveness of the method is
comparable to that of the pill but
without any side effects or health risks
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
thank you the data also shows that the
youngest user group women in the early
20s have a lower rate of unintended
pregnancy than women in their 30s this
is rarely seen on my other contraceptive
methods as younger women are more
fertile on average it’s because the app
is indeed just a tool that women can use
how they see fit this younger women have
a stronger wish to avoid pregnancy they
are actually better at protecting
themselves from their fertile so the
data shows that these young women can
very much handle the data on their own
bodies and they should not be
underestimated it’s also very much
thanks to the data that we have in the
clinical studies we perform that their
app is the first ever to be certified as
a contraceptive it is now a medical
device from the same regulatory risk
class as the condom and this is a huge
milestone not only for us or our users
but for health applications in general
as it is now possible for an algorithm
to replace a pharmaceutical drug I will
never finish
I think is incredibly cool what rather
simple data like a woman’s body
temperature can tell us I mean the fact
that temperature shows when a woman
ovulates
unlocks a wide range of possible
insights I mean obviously when she’s
first dollar when when she isn’t which
is important for contraception but it
also shows if she’s likely to be less
fertile in general and might need
external help conceiving it can also
tell her exactly when her PMS is coming
or maybe if she’s approaching menopause
but the temperature also tells other
stories how is the thyroid functioning
does she maybe have hypothyroidism which
can make it more likely to have a
miscarriage and in general is more
difficult to conceive we can sometimes
even see in the temperature data of a
pregnant woman if her hormone levels are
dropping and she needs medication to
prevent a miscarriage from happening the
temperature data also shows if you have
a temporary infection in your body which
could be an early sign of certain
cancers a whole new world of
possibilities open more and more
startups and therefore also investments
go into health tech med tech and FEM
tech and I think what we should strive
for together is to get the complete
understanding of our bodies this
knowledge would allow for better
decision makings and preventative
actions instead of the current system of
detecting and treating already existing
health issues every person is unique and
only when we have a full understanding
on a personal level
can we take proper actions I think the
future is very exciting as the
possibilities are really endless
due to the data-driven insights still to
come thank [Applause]
Please follow and like us: