That's the question that Gözden Torun at the Galatea Lab, in a collaboration with Tokyo Tech scientists, aimed to answer in her thesis work when she made the discovery that may one day turn windows into single material light-harvesting and sensing devices.

"Tellurium being semiconducting, based on this finding we wondered if it would be possible to write durable patterns on the tellurite glass surface that could reliably induce electricity when exposed to light, and the answer is yes," explains Yves Bellouard who runs EPFL's Galatea Laboratory.

From the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea to the medieval Jewish legend of the golem through Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and beyond, we have grappled with those important questions, and also frightened and titillated ourselves with tales of our inventions coming to life.

A statuesque queen breathes life into the creation — the Henry Higgins of her own Eliza Doolittle, the Pygmalion of her Galatea.

And Ysabelle Cheung’s “Galatea” imagines a robot programmed for companionship who is quietly connected to a world her owner knows nothing about.