On the 24th of September 2021, the European Researcher’s Night took place. It is a unique opportunity for the research community to engage with citizens of all ages and regardless of their scientific background in order to promote youth innovation and raise awareness about research and its impact on society.
Since 2005, the public event, funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions (MSCA), has been happening in multiple countries, and thousands of scientists have participated. The main target of the whole initiative is to attract families, students and those with no direct connection to the STEAM fields (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics). More specifically, in 2020, more than 2 million visitors attended events in many European countries. This year, the Researcher’s Night in Pisa was organised in the central city locations where research stands were set, meetings were conducted, and speeches were given, always with available aperitifs in nearby cafes and bookshops.
The SoftGrip consortium was represented by a team of 4 researchers from the BioRobotics Institute of Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna. Throughout the night, the attendees had the opportunity to get insights into the technologies behind our soft robotic grippers, the project’s mission, and the methodologies followed. A SoftGrip highlight was that people could also see one of the very first versions of the grippers’ fingers and learn how soft robotics can revolutionise harvesting in mushroom and soft fruit industries.
Overall, the experience of sharing innovations, developing ideas and new technologies is always a great way to widen people’s horizons and create strong bridges between the research community and society at large.
See you all at the next Researcher’s Night with more SoftGrip developments to showcase! 🥂
For more information on the Europe-wide event
https://ec.europa.eu/research/mariecurieactions/event/2021-european-researchers-night
For the local events in Italy (website in Italian)
