RENILIT-2009 · Researchers' Night in Lithuania 2009

The main idea of the event is to show that researchers are ordinary people having not ordinary profession – their job is full of excitement, unpredictability and unbelievable discoveries. The event pointed towards natural sciences takes place in 6 rather distant sites including 4 largest cities and covering a wide geographical area of Lithuania. That enables to attract as many participants as possible. The project is polarized towards whole society - all ages, all genders, all nationalities, all ethnic groups - everyone will be welcomed to an amazing world of research and will find that they also can perform experimental research. A lot of different activities are offered for visitors - they will see not only the serious side of natural sciences (astrophysics, Earth science, physics, chemistry, biology/biotechnology, biomedicine, agronomy, forestry, environmental research), but also the funny one. The popular lectures and the interactive program “Hands on experiments” in the open research laboratories at 5 universities, 2 research institutes and a high-tech industrial company comprise one part of the event. This action is complemented by the “Amalgam” program comprised of public science show, visiting specialized exhibitions, theater performances, finals of the announced competitions and other diverse activities in four botany gardens (and two museums). Activities of both parts of the event are based on the direct communication and discussions among academic and broad public, involving participants, students and researchers in joint project activities. The young people will be familiarized with researchers by direct communication and by presenting them the selected successful cases of individual research carrier in Lithuania and playing real stories on what the life of researcher is like.