The Cyprus Institute had an inspiring presence at the “Researcher’s Night 2019” event that took place on Friday, September 27th at the Filoxenia Conference Center in Nicosia. The event is held annually to promote the importance of research, technology, and innovation, and takes place at the same time in 371 cities across Europe and beyond, on the last Friday of September. The event is an initiative of the European Commission and organized by the Research and Innovation Foundation, and is dedicated to bringing researchers closer to the public.

The public had the great opportunity to get acquainted with eight different activities from CyI's three Research Centers:

• “Climate change and water resources: Interactive learning and response to the challenges”: The activity focused on interactive methods that look at climate change and how it impacts the ecosystem and in particular water resources. During the Researcher's Night there were experiments, experiential activities, games for teens and children on the impact of different land management practices on water flow and soil erosion. Also, visitors could take precedence over flood-related activities through the ERMIS-F Flood Focused Environmental Risk Web Service to visit flood risk maps looking at areas of interest today and tomorrow, upload incident photos and create their own survival maps in times of disaster.

• “Close Relations… of Climate Kind!”: Visitors could find out about EMME-CARE studies dust and clouds in the atmosphere, using models and observations of climate, as well as measurements of what air we breathe, with an overall goal to protect the Environment of Cyprus by surveying and monitoring it with airborne platforms!

• “Introductory examples to simulation and computational science”:
  • Monte Carlo algorithm for Integration: This demonstration showed how one can approximate numerical integration using random numbers. Attendees had the opportunity to visualize more complex simulations being carried out on the CyTera facility of The Cyprus Institute.
  • Simulation of chaotic movement: This demonstration showed how one computes the motion of systems that are not analytically solvable, with applications in fundamental physics, climate modelling, and engineering. The demonstration included a simple and double pendulum which attendees could manipulate to realize the difference between deterministic and chaotic motion. Moreover, they could observe the solution of the motion using a small simulation of the chaotic motion, as well as more complicated simulations with similar setup.
  • Demonstration of Neural Networks: This activity included an interactive setup in which attendees challenged an Artificial Intelligence in a guessing game and a picture scavenger hunt for objects the Neutral Network was not able to easily recognise. The activity was intended to demonstrate the potential as well as the limitations of such applications.

• “The human skeleton: a window to the past”: “How active were our ancestors? What were their dietary habits like, how healthy were there and how mobile?” All this information could be extracted from the human skeleton, using appropriate research tools. This activity was more popular for an audience aged 5 to 15 years and showed what an osteoarchaeologist’s job looks like from the stage of excavation to the stage of laboratory analysis. In specific, attendees could learn the main principles of an archaeological excavation, by participating in the excavation of selected bone casts. Visitors had the opportunity to determine if a human skeleton belongs to a man or a woman, how old he/she was, how active and whether he/she suffered from any diseases, exactly as a professional osteoarchaeologist does in the lab.

• “Cypriot Medieval Graffiti: collecting voices from the past”: The workshop aimed to raise awareness about the presence and the relevance of the Medieval graffiti of Cyprus. Visitors had the opportunity to explore past people’s messages recorded on church walls, to see how researchers document and study them applying innovative technologies to recover the graffiti meaning and value. Through different activities, visitors got closer to graffiti creation, documentation, and interpretation, learning about a usually unexplored aspect of the rich Cypriot cultural heritage.

• “Endangered architectural and archaeological Heritage in the south Eastern MEediterRAnean area – EpHEMERA”: The workshop of the Cyprus Institute, in collaboration with the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus and the Byzantine Museum of the Makarios III Foundation in Nicosia, aimed to raise national and international awareness about the risks to which Cypriot Heritage, especially in the northern area of the country, is continuously exposed. Visitors had the opportunity to explore virtually several Byzantine churches, realized by the Andreas Pittas Art Characterization Labs (APAC) team. Through different activities, visitors of different ages were engaged in the recomposition of fragmented artefacts, especially frescoes, which were recently repatriated in Cyprus thanks to the efforts of various national authorities.

• “What did people cultivate, eat and drink in ancient Cyprus?”: “What did our ancestors eat? What did they cultivate and where? Did they gather wild plants? Did the produce wine, olive oil and maybe beer?” All the answers could be extracted through the study of the plant remains, found carbonised in the archaeological excavations. “What did human cultivate, drink and eat in Ancient Cyprus” included activities for students 5 to 15 years of age, and presented the work of an archaeobotanist in the field and the laboratory. The students learned about the kind of cereals, pulses and fruits that ancient Cypriots ate and then they had the opportunity to observe ancient seeds under the stereomicroscope!
  
  
• “Discover the synchrotron: Analysing microstructures of the human body”: This activity took visitors to a journey of discovery with synchrotron light, micro Computed Tomography (microCT), and light microscopy, focusing on the human body, both in the archaeological past, as well as in the present. Attendees had an opportunity to explore their own hair with microscopes, comparing the information they could glean with information that has been obtained using holographic tomography at a synchrotron. Synchrotron data showed a great detail on the internal microstructures of single hair strands, while with microscopy they would be able to view the external surface of their own hair.