Science Festival in Belgrade

By :Jelena Jovanovic
Belgrade, Dec.8th 2009 (Source: Serbia Today) - The 3rd Festival of Science, was held in Belgrade from December 4th to December 6th. The festival has gained an increasing following since its inception and has proved that science has many fans in Serbia. The festival drew over 17 000 visitors in total – among them were students from 135 Serbian primary and secondary schools. In the first day alone there were 6000 visitors to the festival.
This year`s the Science Festival took place in the vacated space of department store `Kluz`, in the city center, and provided a perfect setting for exhibitions, presentations, scientific experiments, and lectures.
Most visitors of the festival were from Belgrade, but many school groups from the surrounding towns of Negotin, Nis, Cuprija, Pozega, Smederevo, Arandjelovac came to Belgrade with their teachers.
The festival was formally opened by Serbian Minister for Science and Technological Development Bozidar Djelic and the Festival producers from the organization ’Museum Night’ - Ana Jovanovic and Mladen Petrovic.
More than 200 scientists and researchers from 22 scientific institutions and 30 foreign guests had a project or experiment to present and explain the importance of achievements from 28 scientific fields including; physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, mathematics, geology, psychology, and genetics. Among foreign guests at the festival were representatives of the Centers for Science Promotion from France, Spain, and Sweden, and there were also guest exhibitors from Switzerland and Thailand.
The slogan of this year festival, organized under the patronage of the Ministry of Science and the Belgrade City Assembly, was ’100% Science’. Additional sponsor of the festival was of the festival was Erste Bank.