On the last Friday of September, European Researchers’ Night 2025 took place across Latvia, bringing together around 29,650 participants with hundreds of exciting activities. Experiments, creative workshops, and walks with researchers revealed science as a valuable and inspiring source for society. This annual initiative provided an opportunity for families, schoolchildren, students, and anyone else interested to learn how research provides practical benefits and influences our daily lives, while encouraging us to think about new opportunities for the future.
On September 26, more than 40 venues across Latvia hosted Researchers’ Night events representing a wide range of sciences, from social sciences and humanities to natural sciences. The rich and diverse program ensured that every curious visitor could find the most interesting way to explore the world of science. It is particularly significant that young people – today’s schoolchildren and students, but tomorrow’s researchers, inventors, and innovators – were actively involved in this year’s event. This is a valuable contribution to the long-term development of Latvian society.
The Institute of Electronics and Computer Science also opened its doors to everyone. Visitors had the opportunity to learn about the latest technologies, look into the future of research, and try out various activities. The number of visitors reached 738 throughout the evening, which we are very happy about and thank you for joining us!
The program included:
Demonstrations and presentations
- Event camera demonstration
- Bi-modal palm biometrics system demonstration
- Opportunity to try virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) glasses
- Presentation of an artificial intelligence-based conveyor robotics system
- Presentation “Deep machine learning and synthetic data”
Games and activities
- Game “Beat the Neural Network”
- Quantum sensor game with prizes
- Opportunity for event participants to paint and draw images related to EDI fields
- Small “cinema hall”
- Participants could learn how to receive financial support and training in digital product creation from the Latvian Digital Accelerator together with scientists
- Car simulator activity
- Robot dog demonstration and game
- Opportunity to see EDI’s self-driving car (lucky visitors had the chance to take a ride)
- Tour of the robotics laboratory, which took place every hour (at 5:30 p.m., 6:30 p.m., 7:30 p.m., and 8:30 p.m.)
This year’s theme, “Discover your inner researcher!”, proved to be particularly inspiring – visitors of all ages enthusiastically indulged their curiosity, conducted experiments, listened to lectures, and went on educational excursions. During the event, they discovered that science unites the natural sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences. The demonstration experiments, research walks, escape rooms, and creative workshops were particularly popular, allowing visitors to explore the scientific environment in an informal and exciting atmosphere, becoming active explorers themselves.
Photo review of Researchers’ Night EDI (Photos by Deniss Tiščenko)
