Romanian Science Festival
Romanian Science Festival

Romania

Romanian Science Festival

2022 2022 Winner Project | Engage Science Engagement (Falling Walls Engage)

Romanian Science Festival (RSF) is an initiative that aims to popularise STEM subjects among young people in Romania. We use sciences to set off their lifelong inquisitiveness and thrust for knowledge. That is why our motto is ‘Don’t get bored! Always be curious!’

We reach our goal firstly by providing role models: students, researchers, and professionals from the growing Romanian academic diaspora become RSF mentors. We create a platform as a means of transferring knowledge between the academic diaspora and the Romanian education system. Each year we also organize a two-day festival in multiple cities of Romania, where we meet students in-person.

Our community amounts to 120 volunteer mentors who connect with children and schools from all over the country. Moreover, we promote accessibility and inclusion by bringing sciences to traditionally underrepresented communities and regions of Romania in all our activities. During its three years of existence, Romanian Science Festival has reached more than 25,000 young people with in-person events and has engaged with more than 200 schools in the country by organising online ‘meet-a-scientist sessions’ with our mentors.

We had 100,000 reach online through the weekly webinars held by STEM researchers and we created an online library of 58 science sessions, one of the largest science resources in Romanian language that teachers can freely access. This is just the beginning! With large public support and our mentors’ involvement, Romanian Science Festival will continue to grow and inspire a new generation of scientists!

Sandor Kruk

Romanian Science Festival

Sandor Kruk completed his PhD in Astrophysics at the University of Oxford in 2018 and previously was a Research Fellow in Space Science at the European Space Agency in the Netherlands. He works as a Data Scientist at the European Space Agency (ESA) in Madrid.

Sandor Kruk develops novel tools for data analysis in astronomy and involves the public in genuine astronomical research through citizen science. He is the Project Scientist of Galaxy Zoo (www.galaxyzoo.org), a successful astronomy citizen science project, engaging hundreds of thousands of volunteers online in the classification of galaxies.

Sandor Kruk developed the Hubble Asteroid Hunter Project (www.asteroidhunter.org), asking the public to search for asteroids in the famous Hubble Space Telescope images.

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