For the third year in a row, Hamburg is coordinating a “Night of Knowledge” with open houses, tours, demonstrations and presentations at many of Hamburg’s universities and research institutes from 5pm to midnight. Mein Schatz‘s Institute participated last year and put a whole lot of effort into making their events fun and interesting for the visitors.  I am personally a huge fan of taking research and making it accessible to the public, especially if that public is me!

So it’s no surprise that I have huge plans for this year’s Nacht des Wissens on Saturday.  I mean c’mon, who doesn’t want to go behind the scenes at the Bernhard Nocht Insitute for Tropical Medicine and listen to presentations about viruses and parasites?  Influenza anyone?  We might also check out the labs at the Heinrich Pette Institute for Experimental Virology and Immunology or peer into a fluorescent microscope at the Research Institute at the Child Cancer Center.

But not everything is about health and viruses and medicine (those are just my particular geeky interests), you can also visit the Bucerius Law School or hear a talk on Afghanistan at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy or hundreds of other cool things.

And it’s all free, so beat that!  If you’re in the area, I definitely encourage you to check it out.  If not, you can live vicariously through my photos that I’ll share with you next week.