By S. Enshaeifar

The Cheltenham Science Festival is one of the UK’s leading science festivals, and was important for young researchers to attend. It’s both for the novice scientist and for the experts too. Sometimes, we tend to focus on our niche areas. Although this event did not have any particular topic related to my research, it provided me a great overview of research in science. I had the opportunity to see presentations on a number of different subjects ranging from criminal minds, the Higgs particle, fly-sized spy, to robots and the human brain; there was something for everyone and many subjects to discover! Most importantly, the “brainstorming” session came at the end of the presentations when we had the opportunity to ask questions. It is always a pleasure to learn something new from this “question” time.

I attended Famelab, which was first set up in 2005, it showed how someone could intrigue the minds of people with a short presentation lasting minutes each. These were no ordinary presentations, using only props and acting to convey a topic in science. It was a delight to see how the arts and drama can convey science in such a short timeframe and nice to see such passion in such a short period of time.

Overall, the event was about finding voices in science, a voice to question anything and everything we can think of. After all, most discoveries start with a simple question.