Press Release

06/09/2023

EFFEKTE Science Festival

Science up close

Ten years after its premiere, the event series offers almost 100 program points

Every two years, the city of Karlsruhe is transformed into a giant hands-on laboratory. In mid-June, the time has come again: From Saturday, June 17 to Sunday, June 25, there will be a week of fascinating, effective and often unique insights into the local science landscape of Karlsruhe. After 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2021, the science festival is entering its sixth round this June.

Karlsruhe universities and scientific institutions will present their work to a broad audience in exhibitions, lectures and workshops, art installations, concerts, science shows, and exciting and surprising experiments. With 36 cooperation partners, more institutions than ever before are taking part in the science festival, which was held for the first time ten years ago and is thus celebrating its anniversary. EFFEKTE, one of the largest events of its kind in Germany, is organized by the Karlsruhe Science Office.

EFFEKTE Science Festival: an impressive event

“The EFFEKTE Science Festival is an impressive event that manages to get people of all ages excited about science and research every two years. I am delighted that this festival has been firmly anchored in Karlsruhe as a center of science and research for ten years now, and I am sure that the wide range of hands-on activities will once again be actively used and that the anniversary festival will once again succeed in communicating complex issues in a clear and entertaining way,” emphasizes Gabriele Luczak-Schwarz, First Mayor of the City of Karlsruhe.

“In ten years, the EFFEKTE Science Festival has created a unique knowledge network with numerous partners in and around Karlsruhe, from which the science location benefits enormously today”, adds Clas Meyer, Head of the Science Office of the City of Karlsruhe.

After the pandemic, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is able to organize an open day on the North Campus for the first time in four years. It will take place on Saturday, June 17, from 10 am to 7 pm. The Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences, the University of Education as well as the Karlshochschule and the University of Applied Sciences for Economics and Management will also provide information about their work. On Sunday, for example, there will be science-seeing tours of the city and an open-air cinema with films to make you dream, shudder and laugh. The “Wissensdurst” lectures offer exciting scientific talks in pubs throughout the week. The “#digitalk” answers the question of whether we will soon be living in a (parallel) universe due to advancing digitalization.

In various exhibitions, reference is made to the festival motto “Science Cosmos” (in German: “Wissenschaftskosmos”). Various art and culture institutions – such as the Staatliche Kunsthalle (National Art Gallery Karlsruhe), the Badische Landesbibliothek (Baden State Library), the Improtheater (improvisational theater), the Badisches Staatstheater (theater and opera house in Karlsruhe) as well as the Karlsruhe University of Music – provide very special insights into science.

The initiative “Mars findet Stadt” (Mars meets city), brings Mars to Karlsruhe. Seven meters in diameter and printed with original photographs from NASA, the work by British artist Luke Jerram will be traveling on orbit through nine science cities in Germany starting in May. German meteorologist and astronaut candidate Dr. Insa Thiele-Eich will open the exhibition on Friday, June 23, at 4 p.m. and provide exciting insights into space travel in an interactive format.

Nearly 100 program items at the EFFEKTE Science Festival

For the final weekend, the palace square “Karlsruher Schlossplatz” will be transformed into a large science city with tents and a stage program on Saturday, June 24 and Sunday, June 25. Karlsruhe’s universities and scientific institutions will invite visitors to marvel, touch and experiment at their tents. At the “Fest der jungen Forscher” (Festival of Young Researchers), the “osKarl” is traditionally awarded for the best student research projects. On Sunday, the experiment park will also open in the tent city.

On the EFFEKTE stage, there will be a varied program on the closing weekend: a robot show by the FZI Research Center for Information Technology, a future story “Art and Stories from the Future,” “Pluriverse – Modern Stories for a Fairer World” by Grupo Sal, and “Convergences,” a human-machine jam session by the Karlsruhe University of Music with robot guitarist Hellgå Tarr as guest star.

The popular Science Slam, in which young scientists explain their research topics in an entertaining way, is also not to be missed. In the “Geistesblitze” quiz show, students compete against their professors. And in the “Impact Pitch Contest”, various startups try to convince the audience of their business idea.

The popular science shows offer great fun for the whole family and exciting science education at the same time. In addition, the famous Sesame Street characters Ernie and Bert from the Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University (DHBW) in Karlsruhe will be presenting interesting facts about the climate.

About the FZI

The FZI Research Center for Information Technology, with headquarters in Karlsruhe and a branch office in Berlin, is a non-profit institution for information technology application research and technology transfer. It delivers the latest scientific findings in information technology to companies and public institutions and qualifies individuals for academic and business careers or the leap into self-employment. Supervised by professors from various faculties, the research groups at the FZI develop interdisciplinary concepts, software, hardware and system solutions for their clients and implement the solutions found as prototypes. The FZI House of Living Labs provides a unique research environment for application research. The FZI is an innovation partner of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and strategic partner of the German Informatics Society (GI).