Hosted at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, we are excited to join the international TED family, one of the most renowned conferences in the world, based on the spirit of “ideas worth spreading”. The event theme, Lab2App, conveys what we expect the talks will offer to a broad audience: insight into transforming an idea from the laboratory/workbench/drawing board into something whose application/realization has the potential to positively impact the lives of many.