For researchers’ night, the Science Museum of Milan opens for free until 11.30pm. And instead of explaining the research from above, he puts it in the hands of the public.
You can teach an AI by playing cards with it. You can hear what a planet sounds like as it warps, moves and shakes. You may find that leeches, after two thousand years of use and abuse, still have a place in contemporary medicine. And you can end the evening observing the stars from the courtyard of a museum, in the middle of Milan. All in the same night, and without paying for the ticket.
On Friday 25 September, from 6pm to 11.30pm, the Leonardo da Vinci National Science and Technology Museum opens all its spaces free of charge for the European Night of Researchers, the event that every year, across Europe, tries to bring together those who do research and those who only see research told about it. The Museum’s choice is to focus on direct contact: not conferences to listen to in silence, but workshops in which you try, make mistakes and ask questions, and one-to-one meetings in which you can ask a researcher that question that you would never dare to in a classroom.
In the laboratories. This is where we understand how the profession works. With CNR you train an artificial intelligence model through a card game, the most immediate way to see what “training” a machine really means. With the University of Milan we enter mathematical imaging, that is, the algorithms that transform the signals of a CT scan or an MRI into images readable by a doctor. With the University of Insubria we return to leeches and the anticoagulant substances they produce, a trend that pharmacology has never stopped studying. With the University of Siena and the Stelvio National Park we discuss what has changed in mountain ecosystems since the wolf returned: a single predator at the apex of the food chain can change the behavior of ungulates, and with them the vegetation. With the University of Gastronomic Sciences of Pollenzo we are experimenting how sound orients perception, including the taste of what we are eating.
In short talks. The program brings together some of the most open questions of the moment. Maria Chiara Carrozza (University of Milan-Bicocca) compares human learning and artificial learning, and asks what “knowing” means when information is available in unlimited quantities. Michèle Lavagna (Polytechnic of Milan) addresses the problem of building sustainable lunar settlements, the first step towards Mars, while Franco Ongaro, for years at the helm of the ESA technology center in the Netherlands, talks about where the Artemis program has reached.
Giovanna Mascheroni (Catholic University) deals with teenagers and digital media and discusses whether social media access bans really work. Claudio Gandolfi (University of Milan) brings the discussion closer to home: the water of the Po Valley, how much of it remains and how much depends on the climate and how much on the choices of those who manage it. Enrica Maria Porcari comes from CERN, where some of the first global networks were born, and talks about how digital has changed the way we work and decide.
Performances and visits. Some appointments are halfway between the concert and the lesson. “Mātrā, the voice of the planet” translates the data of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology into sounds and images, that is, what the instruments continuously record under our feet. “The Maps of the Cosmos”, edited by the European Gravitational Observatory, traces the great discoveries about the Universe starting from gravitational waves. There is also a story of the sea, that of the transatlantic Conte Biancamano, accompanied by the music of the jazz students of the Civica Scuola Claudio Abbado.
Then there are the objects, which remain the main reason for going to the Science Museum. The guided tours take you on board the Toti submarine, in service in the Navy for thirty years and which arrived in Milan in 2005 after a transport that remained in the annals, and on the command bridge of the Conte Biancamano. With the INFN we delve into the particle physics of the Extreme exposure. With the amateur astronomers’ clubs in Milan and Trezzano we observe the night sky. Marelli Motorsport brings a Formula 1 showcar to explain how hybrids, electrification and new fuels have rewritten the rules of motorsport.
Continuous cycle activities are dedicated to the younger ones on weaving, electricity, nutrition and observation of nature, up to the micro-worlds invisible to the naked eye.
Volta’s thread. The 2026 edition is part of “200VOLTeVOLTA”, the project that accompanies the bicentenary of Alessandro Volta’s death in 2027. Michele de Nigris (RSE) talks about how the electricity sector has changed in the era of renewables and distributed generation, while a podcast from the Alessandro Volta Foundation, with Pandora Rivista, returns to the research of the physicist from Como. That he developed the battery to end a discussion with Luigi Galvani on animal electricity, and not to power the world, is one of those details that make the history of science more interesting than how it is told at school.
Info. National Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo da Vinci, via San Vittore 21, Milan.
Friday 25 September, from 6pm to 11.30pm, free entry. Metro M2 and M4, Sant’Ambrogio stop; buses 50, 96 and 97. Music and food & drink options in the outdoor areas.
