Science festival debuts in the South

A Science Days Festival, organized by the Dynasty Foundation, will be held from April 3 to April 5, 2009, in Krasnodar, popularly known as the southern capital of Russia.
Outstanding scientists from Moscow and Krasnodar will tell audiences about fascinating scientific discoveries.
The best teachers and popularizers will give popular science lectures for school children and young people.
Science teachers—of physics, mathematics, chemistry, and biology—can participate in unique master classes.
The festival makes its first appearance in the South of Russia, having already won over the East and the West.

Schools, orphanages, boarding schools, colleges, and libraries of Krasnodar region will receive Dynasty Foundation publications in popular science, such as Mathematical Etudes and Moscow Time, in a charity event on Friday April 3.
A round table will be held later in Kuban State University of Technology to discuss problems in science education. Government officials, educational administrators, teachers, scientists, and representatives of nonprofits will participate in the discussion.

Prominent teachers from Moscow and Saint Petersburg will give master classes for teachers of physics, mathematics, chemistry, and biology from the Krasnodar region at Kuban State University on April 4. The master teachers will share their teaching experience, telling how to explain problem solving to school students in an easily understood way, revealing the fascinating worlds of optics and nuclear physics, and introducing modern research in biotechnology.

And school children are not forgotten. The festival will present a series of popular science lectures “It isn't boring: Science as seen by passionate people.” Nikolai Andreev — research fellow of Steklov Mathematical Institute (Russian Academy of Sciences), author of the website www.etudes.ru (Rus.) — will show the unusual and fascinating side of “number science” in his interactive lecture “Mathematical etudes”. Lubov Strelnikova — editor-in chief of the journal Chemistry and Life—will speak to children about something very small, but very fashionable: nanotechnologies. Alexei Seliverstov — senior lecturer, Department of General Physics, Physics Faculty, Moscow State University; editor-in-chief of the physics education Internet server phys.web.ru (Rus.); and Moscow Grant (Soros teacher) and six-time ISSEP grant recipient—will demonstrate optic experiments in the course of his lecture “Light works for us!”

Also on the same day, there will be a “Kaleidoscope of discoveries” for the people of Krasnodar. In interesting lectures on genetics, Nikolai Yankovsky and Sergei Kiselev—outstanding scientists from the Vavilov Institute of General Genetics (Russian Academy of Sciences)—will reveal some secrets of the human genome and answer the question whether humanity will conquer ageing.

The discussion of questions in genetics will continue during open meetings on the “Medicine of the future: From genetic therapy to stem cells” with scientists from Moscow and Krasnodar on April 5.

But this is not all. The performances of the Popular Science Theater will surprise young researchers: school children will be presented to “His Majesty, the Experiment” at Krasnodar School No. 71 on April 3 and 4.

The organizers hope that the festival will be a real Spring gift to intellectuals.

PROGRAM OF THE SCIENCE DAYS FESTIVAL IN KRASNODAR (in Russian)

The festival is organized in cooperation with the education and science department of Krasnodar Region, the Krasnodar Center for Scientific and Technical Information, the Charitable Foundation for Supporting Culture, Science, and Education “Volnoye Delo”, Kuban State University, Kuban State University of Technology, and Krasnodar School No. 71.

Science Day is a unique project of the Dynasty Foundation, supporting science and popularizing scientific knowledge. In the two years of its existence, festivals have been held in different parts of the country from the Baltic Sea to Siberia: in Kaliningrad, Saint Petersburg, Cheboksary, Ekaterinburg, Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk, and Irkutsk.

The interesting lecture themes, the outstanding scientists who answer questions, and the understandable presentation of the material—all this attracts people of different ages and professions to the events of the popular science festival in a format that is rare these days. Since the beginning of the project, the events of Science Days Festivals have been visited by more than eight thousand people.