Researchers' Night 2018

The “Researcher’s Night” is an initiative of the European Commission and takes place simultaneously in almost all European countries. For Cyprus, this year it took place at the Lanitis Carob Mill Complex Limassol. On the 27th and on the 28th of September mornings, the exhibition was open to primary and secondary schools respectively, whereas on the 28th afternoon and consequent night, the general public could join in. The “Researchers' Night 2018” in Cyprus is funded by the European Commission under the “Horizon 2020” Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions.

Many different institutions and research groups were there to showcase their interests and work, as well as to inform the general public on research topics they might be unaware of. Audiences of different ages had the opportunity to meet up with Cypriot researchers and see their work, in a festive, friendly atmosphere. This year, special interest was given to all the MSCA fellows with various activities. A dedicated MSCA fellow booth was assigned and all the fellows were wearing a t-shirt saying “MSCA fellow”. 

HPC-LEAP fellows Srijit Paul, Aurora Scapellato and Simone Bacchio participated in the MSCA booth.

HPC-LEAP fellows Srijit Paul, Aurora Scapellato and Simone Bacchio participated in the MSCA booth. The fellows had several exhibits to stimulate the interest of the public, starting with a subtle hands-on, where they showed the blind-folded method of calculating the irrational number pi, which captures several fields like, concepts of probability, law of large numbers in mathematics, Monte-Carlo Integration in algorithms. Apart from this, the fellows had several physics-based simulations of the visible universe and bio-molecular interactions inside the nucleus of a cell. In order to enrapture the young minds with the sheer size and time spent to build a supercomputer, they had a time lapse video of the JURECA supercomputer at Juelich Supercomputing center. 

HPC-LEAP and STIMULATE fellows together at the Researcher's Night 2018  

The students that visited the MSCA booth were very interested in how supercomputers work, and what is possible to do with them. They learned about the CyTera facility at The Cyprus Institute, and how the usage of many parallel cores in a computer can speed up calculations that would be unfeasible or extremely time-costly on a normal computer.

 STIMULATE and HPC-LEAP fellows together at the Researcher's Night 2018 in front of the MSCA Fellows Wall of Fame at the MSCA booth