Prev Next 1 of Previous Next The seventeenth edition of the Science Festival takes place in Genoa until 4 November, twelve days of conferences, shows and workshops to learn many new things about science and technology, meeting Italian and foreign scientists of all kinds. This year the theme is “Elements”: it was chosen to celebrate the 150 years that have passed since the Russian chemist Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev ordered the first chemical elements in the periodic table. There will therefore be a lot of talk about chemistry, but also about gravitational waves and black holes, rare diseases and animals that live in cities, plastics and genetics, climate change and electric cars.
Speaking of electric cars at the Science Festival, there is also an exhibition structure created by Ford precisely to tell the most recent advances in this technological field: Go Electric. It is an interactive exhibition to understand how electric cars work and the differences between the consumption of the various electrified technologies of Ford: the Mild Hybrid, in which the electric motor is in support of the traditional one, the Hybrid, the Plug-In Hybrid, which has a more capable battery than other hybrid cars, and the All-Electric. Inside the structure there is also a simulator to personally test how acceleration feels on Ford's first electric SUV, which will arrive in 2020: in fact, inside the exhibition there is E-Launch, the first simulator at world of electric vehicle acceleration.
Go Electric is an opportunity to preview some of Ford's new electrified cars up close and meet industry experts, available to explain the advantages of each of the different technologies. The car models that can be seen are the new Ford Puma, EcoBoost Hybrid, and the new Ford Kuga Plug-in Hybrid.
In the program of the Science Festival (which can be consulted in full here) there are hundreds of events: we have put together a selection of the most interesting meetings.
Saturday 26 October
15.00 – Crazy numbers!
In the Auditorium of the Aquarium of Genoa, Maurizio Codogno, scientific popularizer and blogger of the Post, will hold a conference / show on how figures shape literature, art and our life.
15.30 – The food of the future
At the Doge's Palace, in the Sala del Minor Consiglio, Martin Scholten, expert in Agricultural Sciences, illustrates in a lectio magistralis, as they say, the value of circular agriculture and importance of a sustainable future of food.
18.00 – Science and enchantment
Michele Bellone, scientific journalist and editorial curator of Italian non-fiction for Codice Edizioni, will hold a lectio magistralis on the science hidden in the narratives of the fantastic at the Palazzo Ducale.
18.30 – Robotics Society
At the Doge's Palace, a round table will be held with Matteo Bianchi, Antonio Bicchi, Danilo Caporale, Nikolaos Tsagarakis, moderated by Manuel G. Catalano on the machines that change human life.
21.00 – Mathematical heart
Alfio Quarteroni, professor of Numerical Analysis at the Politecnico di Milano, will talk about how the science of numbers can help us understand the human body. Also at the Doge's Palace.
Sunday 27 October
11.00 – Pseudoscience and its friends
At the Palazzo Ducale Gilberto Corbellini, professor of History of medicine and professor of Bioethics at the University of Rome La Sapienza, will hold a lectio magistralis on the false opinions that threaten our freedom .
15.00 – Free and without borders
In the Auditorium of the Aquarium of Genoa, Francesca Buoninconti, naturalist and scientific journalist, will talk about the extraordinary stories of migratory animals.
15.00 – The betrayal of numbers
At the Doge's Palace, in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, there will be a lectio magistralis by David Hand, mathematician and professor of Statistics at the Imperial College of London, who will talk about dark data and the art of hiding the truth.
17.00 – The sixth mass extinction: are we already beyond the point of no return?
Lisa Signorile, journalist and science popularizer, will talk about the emergency of extinction in the animal world. In the Auditorium of the Aquarium of Genoa.
21.00 – With the eyes of science
At the Palazzo Ducale Felice Frankel, researcher at MIT, will hold a lectio magistralis that will accompany the spectators through the images of the research.
Monday 28 October
17.00 – The genesis of everything
In the Auditorium of the Galata Museo del Mare, Antonio Dal Canton, Pasquale Esposito, Alessandro Faragli, Stefano Geniere Nigra, Edoardo La Porta and Francesca Viazzi will talk about water and sodium: creators of human life and health.
17.30 – Modern archeology: the future that discovers the past
Marijke Gnade, holder of the chair of Archeology of pre-Roman civilizations of central Italy at the University of Amsterdam, will hold a lectio magistralis on archaeological research at the Palazzo della Borsa Dutch in the ancient city of Satricum.
18.30 – In the air that I breathe
At the Palazzo Ducale there will be a round table with Paolo Povero, Serena Clara Recagno, Roberta Vecchi and moderated by Paolo Prati on the study of polluting elements in the atmosphere.
Tuesday 29 October
11.00 – Plastic: revolution of the 1900s
In Piazza delle Feste, Filippo Bertacchini will talk about the problem of plastic and how to transform it into a sustainable resource.
17.30 – Seduced by mathematics
At the Palazzo della Borsa Sabine Hossenfelder, physicist, researcher at the Frankfurt Institute of Advanced Studies and blogger, will give a lecture on the disorder and complexity of the new theories of physics.
21.00 – The Missing Nail
At the Doge's Palace, a documentary by Peter Greenaway – the director of The Mysteries of the Garden of Compton House and The Zoo of Venus, among others – will be screened on the missing nail that Leonardo gives Vinci used to hang the plumb line necessary to make The Last Supper: in the film, which is accompanied by a live musical performance, Greenaway wonders what happened to it.
Wednesday 30 October
11.00 – Leonardo da Vinci. Long live the Last Supper
At the Palazzo Ducale, there will be a meeting with Ezio Bolzacchini, Luciano Milanesi, Chiara Rostagno, moderated by Sandra Fiore on how to challenge time to preserve a work with science.
18.00 – Growing vegetables (almost) without water?
At the Cisterns of the Doge's Palace, Andrea Schubert, professor of the University of Turin, will talk about how we can get plants that are tolerant to lack of water.
18.00 – The rising of the giant
At the Doge's Palace the astrophysicist Ferdinando Patat will give a lectio magistralis on the Extremely Large Telescope, the great European telescope under construction.
21.00 – The Scream of the Universe
At the Doge's Palace, a conversation on gravitational waves will be held between Pia Astone and Dario Menasce, both researchers from the National Institute of Nuclear Physics.
21.30 – The brilliant nature
At the Doge's Palace, Barbara Mazzolai, director of the Micro-Biorobotics Center of the Italian Institute of Technology in Pontedera, in Pisa, will hold a lecture on the characteristics of the plants from which we can learn something. For example to build robots, as she did.
Thursday 31 October
17.00 – We are the Martians
At the Galata Museo del Mare, meeting with Patrizia Caraveo, research manager at National Institute of Astrophysics, will talk about what we know about the possibility of life on other planets.
17.00 – Smartphone chemistry
At the Imperial Palace, Vincenzo Buscaglia, researcher at the Institute of Condensed Matter Chemistry and Energy Technologies, will talk about the sustainability and criticalities of the chemical elements that make up smartphones .
18.30 – Insects, crimes and mummies
At the Doge's Palace, Stefano Vanin, professor of Zoology, will give a lectio magistralis on the study of insects and the birth of forensic entomology.
Friday 1 November
11.00 – CERN and the Higgs boson
At the Doge's Palace, conversation with Paola Catapano, science communicator and science journalist at CERN, and James Gillies, physicist and head of the CERN communications group from 2003 to 2015.
15.00 – The physics of Interstellar
At the Doge's Palace, astrophysicist Luca Perri will take his cue from the images of the film to talk about Albert Einstein's principles of general relativity.
15.30 – The genes of evil
At the Palazzo Ducale, Valter Tucci, director of the laboratory of genetics and epigenetics of behavior at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa, will talk about the latest discoveries in science on evil behavior.
16.30 – Animal coexistence
At the Giacomo Doria Natural History Museum, a meeting will be held with Bruno Cignini, zoologist and expert in biodiversity and urban fauna, and the journalist Martina Russo who will talk about urban fauna.
17.00 – Glacial elements
At the Galata Museo del Mare, a conversation about Greenland, between the journalist Alberto Flores d'Arcais and Marco Tedesco, professor at Columbia University and researcher at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies of NASA and one of the leading experts on global warming.
17.30 – Mysterious writings
At the Doge's Palace, Silvia Ferrara, professor of Aegean civilization at the University of Bologna, will talk about some forms of still undeciphered writing, such as that of the Voynich Manuscript.
Saturday 2 November
15.00 – Brain without limits
At the Galata Museo del Mare, Johann Rossi Mason, scientific medical journalist, will talk about the use of nootropics, drugs capable of improving cognitive abilities.
15.00 – Return to Ecocene
At the Doge's Palace, a round table will be held with Antonio Brunori, Francesco Cufari, Shimon Rachmilevitch, Giorgio Vacchiano, moderated by Marco Merola, on the fires in the Amazon and global warming.
15.30 – The first image of a black hole
At the Doge's Palace, a round table will be held with Christian Fromm, Ciriaco Goddi, Sara Issaoun, Luciano Rezzolla and moderated by Roberta Fulci to talk about how the comparison between theoretical images and observations led us to discover a black hole.
15.30 – Rare diseases
At the Palazzo della Borsa, meeting with Elena Bresin, head of the Genetics Unit for Clinical Research of the Mario Negri Institute of Pharmacological Research in Bergamo, and Marco Gattorno and Alberto Martini, respectively executive and scientific director of the Giannina Gaslini Institute in Genoa illustrate progress and new frontiers for the treatment of rare diseases.
18.00 – Atomlandia
At the Doge's Palace, Jon Butterworth, director of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University College London and blogger of the Guardian, will give a lectio magistralis on particle physics.
18.30 – Major epidemics
At the Doge's Palace, Francesco Galassi, paleopathologist and associate professor at Flinders University (Australia), and Barbara Gallavotti, biologist, writer and scientific journalist, will talk about infectious diseases and vaccines.
21.00 – DNA, the show that makes science play
At the Teatro della Tosse, Telmo Pievani philosopher and historian of biology, as well as an expert in the theory of evolution, and the Deproducers, a musical project born in collaboration with AIRC, present an unpublished work that combines research and music.
Sunday 3 November
10.00 – Traveling plants
At the Teatro della Corte, in an event suitable for children aged 11 and over, Telmo Pievani and the journalist Andrea Vico will tell the stories of some plants we know well, explaining for example that bananas once had seeds and that tomatoes were long considered poisonous.
15.00 – Imperfection. Elements of a natural history
Telmo Pievani will also explain why in evolution what could be considered imperfections are very important. At the Doge's Palace.
15.30 – Hunt for the light to find twin worlds
Frans Snik, astronomer and docent and at the University of Leiden, he will talk about the technologies used to identify exoplanets, that is, planets outside the Solar System. At the Palazzo della Borsa.
15.30 – A Universe of Elements
Carole Jackson, expert in radio astronomy, will explain how today's telescopes are used to understand which elements are found most in the Universe. At the Doge's Palace.
17.30 – Fire, Air, Water, Earth
At the Palazzo della Borsa, Massimo Pompilio, researcher at the Pisa section of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology and lecturer at the University of Siena, will give a lectio magistralis on how the knowledge of volcanoes is evolving.
18.00 – Genomics England
At the Doge's Palace, Tom Fowler, director of the Genomics England company specialized in the study of rare, infectious diseases and cancer will give a lectio magistralis on his project.
21.00 – Mendeleev: the man of the elements
At the Doge's Palace, Vladimir Shiltsev, head of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia and professor at Northern Illinois University, will give a lecture on Mendeleev's life and studies.
