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IMDEA at the Madrid es Ciencia Fair 2023 – Science Building a Sustainable Future

March 28, 2023

Very young researchers and renowned scientists shared the spotlight once again this year at Feria Madrid es Ciencia.

Organized by Fundación para el Conocimiento madrimasd, the 12th edition of Madrid es Ciencia, held in Pavilion 5 of IFEMA from March 23rd to March 25th, repeated the success of previous editions. Thousands of people enjoyed and learned a lot about science, discovering the cutting-edge research being done in Madrid, both in elite research centers such as the IMDEA institutes or the CSIC, and in the educational centers of our region.

It has been an intense and exciting three days, in which curiosity, the desire to learn, and the pleasure of teaching mixed in a masterful formula that allowed thousands of attendees to know that IMDEA Water researchers are seeking solutions based on nature to detect and mitigate the impact of pollution. They also saw how IMDEA Energy researchers melted chocolate with light, made a lava lamp, or extinguished a candle with water, baking soda, and vinegar.

IMDEA Materials researchers also participated in this masterful formula with their 3D printer, new biomaterials for resorbable implants, or their fireproof materials.

The IMDEA Software team contributed new ingredients: as Hanoi towers, disks for encrypting messages, application hacking, Akinator, protocol tracking, and more. The IMDEA Networks team contributed other components to the formula that helped to discover what the Internet knows about you, or how WiFi access points can capture movement. They also explored what artificial intelligence brings to sign language learning.

Contributions from IMDEA Food and IMDEA Nanoscience Researchers rounded out IMDEA’s masterful mix. The former taught attendees how to extract their DNA in a simple way, “tested” our knowledge about nutrition, and convinced us that Precision Nutrition is a science that is already present in our lives and has a great future. With the latter, they saw levitating water droplets or magnets, paintings that drew by themselves when a magnet was near them, how a minimal change in the distribution of a layer of atoms can change everything, or how it is possible to manufacture permanent magnets in a more efficient and sustainable way.

In addition, physicist and science popularizer Javier Santaolalla joined the IMDEA stand to announce the premiere of the course “Materiales que salvan vidas“, the first of those being prepared by some of our researchers for the Amautas platform, one of Javier’s latest projects. He was accompanied by Mónica Echeverry, the IMDEA Materials researcher and author of the course.

It was a great pleasure for us to share our work with the public who visited our stand, and we hope to see you all next year!

You can see a small sample of what we did at the XII Feria Madrid es Ciencia at: https://youtu.be/YjCxmOZpZTE.