Against all odds, after an enormous amount of worries, work and will power, this Saturday 26 Sept we will officially open the 10th Sofia Science Festival and invite you all to be part of the opening. Here are the logistics:

Official opening

Time: 11:00 (speeches start11:15) to approx. 11:45

Place: Sofia Tech Park – outdoor space in front of the John Atanasoff Forum

Official guests: Mrs Mariya Gabriel – EU Commissioner; Mrs Yordanka Fandukova – Mayor of Sofia and Mr. Todor Chobanov – Deputy Mayor; Mrs Karina Angelieva – Deputy Minister of Education & Science; Rob Dixon – British Ambassador

Audience for the opening partners, scientists attending, volunteers, the media, visitors to the festival.

Programme

The full programme is attached in English.

The events which will be in English are listed separately here.

The full programme is online in Bulgarian or from the pdf version of the booklet. Please note that there are events in English, Spanish and Italian this year, besides Bulgarian.

Also attached our Covid-19 safety plan – we have take every possible precaution we could sensibly think of and hope to keep all safe.

Besides the 2 days of physical festival, we are also running 5 days of online events for schools from Monday next week.

Here is a blog piece I wrote (in Bulgarian) to trace the road we have walked these past 10 years.

Some of the main topics this year

Aging, physical and mental health

Science and the arts

Notable anniversaries – Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11

Technologies, innovation, space, scifi and AI

Climate change, ecology and biodiversity

Some of the names

  • One of the best climatologists in the world – Dr. Valérie Masson-Delmotte (IPCC)
  • The BBC star of science shows for children – Stefan Gates
  • Multiple award winning science film director and writer Christopher Riley
  • The close associate of the iconic primatologist Jane Goodall
  • Award winning Irish scientist and communicator Niamh Shaw
  • Senior Research Scientist at NASA Dr. Rosaly Lopes
  • Successful Bulgarian researchers who work in the UK

and this is just a random selection

International

Thanks to our international cultural and diplomatic partners, besides the UK and Bulgaria we will have scientists from 8 other countries (although most of them have not been able to travel and will take part through live links to the venues.

This means that there are an impressive 10 countries represented this year – quite worthy of the 10th anniversary of the festival.