The SURFACE Project introduced at Researchers’ Night
The Researchers’ Night is a series of events free of charge organized all across Europe that promotes science and research as a career. In 2019, for two days (27 and 29 September) people could gain insight into the secrets of various scientific fields.
The event aims to present new achievements of scientific research to all age groups with the help of entertaining and inspiring presentations, experiments, guided laboratory tours and playful programmes and to make the colourful work of researchers and developers attractive to young people. In 2019, in more than half thousand European cities more than one million people attended the thousands of free events.
The EU tender regarding the organization of the event was won in 2018 for two years by the consortium led by RCISD (Regional Center for Information and Scientific Development) to which Bay Zoltán Nonprofit Ltd. for Applied Research also belongs.
The leaders and colleagues of the Bay Zoltán Institute are dedicated to creating and developing a close cooperation between education and research, this being a necessary and indispensable condition for obtaining outstanding results. Therefore, at the Researchers’ Night they also they also seized the opportunity to provide insight in their colourful and exciting world for those interested. At each of their three sites – Budapest, Miskolc and Szeged –, they organized numerous exciting events. At Budapest, among others, visitors could attend presentations (regarding the reduction of food waste), chemistry-themed escape room, amateur beer brewing, laser show, and they could also get to know better the job of crime scene technicians by taking part in solving a crime. The events held in Miskolc revolved around virtual reality, robotics, 3D printing, and in the evening the visitors were invited to enjoy a concert. Nonetheless, in Szeged visitors could attend inspiring presentations where light was shed on how bacteria can be used to clean polluted areas.
At Budapest, the SURFACE Project was also introduced, the aim of which is the promotion of reuse and the reduction of waste production – especially through more conscious consumption behaviour. The aim of the three-year-long project managed by 9 Central European countries is to advance and support the establishment of reuse parks.
In this work, the Bay Zoltán Institution is the local contributing partner of the Metropolitan Public Domain Maintenance Nonprofit Private Company Limited by Shares, which also took part in the promotion of the project at the Researchers’ Night, just like the Cseriti charity shop chain, which aims at decreasing the number of unused objects, in the form of reducing the quantity of waste by providing opportunity for the purchase of these items by people with low income.
The stall of the SURFACE Project was visited by more than one thousand people, who could gain new knowledge through first-hand experience and in an entertaining manner about the opportunities of reuse and its various methods.
