The Sant'Anna Science Café returns to popularize science with frontier research: from imitating the animal world to biodiversity, from mathematical models to understand reality to microorganisms living in our bodies

Imitation of the animal world for nature-inspired robotics; biodiversity and the global south; mathematical models for understanding reality; and the microbiota, the set of microorganisms that live in our bodies, for health and good mood. Four topics, chosen from among the many frontier research conducted at the Sant'Anna School, are at the core of as many appointments with science popularization, open to the general public with free admission, at the center of the new edition of the Science Café, which starts at 9 p.m. Thursday, June 6, in the garden of the Sant'Anna School headquarters, 33 Martiri della Libertà Square, Pisa. The Sant'Anna Science Café confirms itself as an opportunity to get closer to the world of scientific research, in an informal but highly stimulating context, where science merges with culture, music and the discovery of new tastes and sounds. 

The four events, which mark Thursday evenings in June, are organized by the Third Mission Area with the scientific responsibility of Debora Angeloni, associate professor at the Institute of Biorobotics of the Sant'Anna School. During the Science Café, researchers from the Sant'Anna School share the results of their research with the public, offering an unprecedented opportunity for in-depth discussion: scientific severity is combined with a popular language, capable of bringing the complexity of scientific research closer to an audience of non-experts. Live music, also curated by groups of students of the Sant'Anna School, and tastings offered by selected artisans also enrich this new edition of the Sant'Anna Science Café.

“When we started with the Sant'Anna Science Café, it was 2009, we were among the first to do good science popularization in Pisa,” Debora Angeloni emphasizes, “and now we see with great achievement that there are several similar initiatives in the city. Evidently science is liked, liked because it is democratic, that is, it uses language and methods that anyone who puts in the effort to learn can understand, there are no principles of unquestionable authority, it does not require acts of faith. It does not preside over boundaries, but rather wants to push them further and further, beyond the darkness of uncertainty and fear. At the end of a day's work, any work, listening to those who do research as a life choice and recount their work, with their feet in the furrow traced by our masters and their eyes and head in the future, can be a refreshing and exciting visit to new territories of the mind, guided by curiosity, method and passion. Finding out what the goals of such research work are,” Debora Angeloni concludes, ”can comfort us that paying taxes also produces more health, more security and, in a word, progress. We look forward to seeing you in large numbers: we are starting again with the Sant'Anna Science Café because so many of you have asked us for it, and that alone is a great achievement.”.

June 6, Donato Romano: Fantastic animals and how to imitate them;

June 13, Valentina d'Amico: Natural treasures, cultural treasures: biodiversity and resilience in the southern hemisphere;

June 20, Giovanni Stabile: Industry, environment, biology: mathematical models to understand the world;

June 27, Paola Tognini: Microbiota for health and good mood.