Piero Angela, ‘The future is an opportunity’; the Cicap founder will speak at the 2022 Festival

The 2022 Cicap Fest, scheduled in Padua from 3 to 5 June next, is dedicated to ‘The science of the world that will come’. The Science and Curiosity Festival, just presented in the Venetian capital, takes place in collaboration with the University, the Municipality and the Province of Padua, with the contribution of the Cassa di Risparmio di Padova and Rovigo Foundation. Alongside the more than 120 meetings, hosted in the prestigious locations of the festival, there are also various activities and workshops aimed at families and children, with in-depth workshops for teachers, enthusiasts and magicians, guided tours in the scientific places of the city, meetings in the squares and in the courtyards, interviews flying in the street on a wheelchair, demonstrations of illusionism, comic entertainment and much more. This year the event also leaves Padua and also arrives in Rovigo: on the occasion of the exhibition dedicated to Giovanni Miani, at Palazzo Roncale , two meetings organized with the support of the Cariparo Foundation. Massimo Polidoro, director of the event, will accompany visitors to discover the past, the mysterious places and constructions of our planet, which generate questions and are a stimulus to research and knowledge. The past, which the geneticist Guido Barbujani will talk about, is within us: the traces of different human forms, prehistoric migrations starting from Africa, from where our ancestors spread all over the planet. (continues) “Thinking about the future, I cannot fail to remember that the new century we are experiencing belongs to the young” observes the founder of Cicap Piero Angela, journalist and great popularizer. As his current honorary president he will speak in one of the most anticipated events of the festival. “In 2050, a year that seems so far away – he continues – they will be 40/50 year olds. In 2090, which seems very far away, they will be less than the age I am today. It will be a century full of changes and I am sincerely sorry to not being able to see everything that will happen: big problems, of course, but also big innovations and many opportunities “. Among the internationally renowned guests of the Festival there are: Sir Michael Marmot, director of the UCL Institute of Health Equity in London; Simonetta Di Pippo, astrophysicist, former director of Human Flight at the European Space Agency and director of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs in Vienna; Michael Mann, climatologist and geophysicist, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University; Edith Widder, oceanographer and marine biologist, CEO and Senior Scientist at the Ocean Research & Conservation Association; Mitchell Valdes-Sosa, director of the Institute of Sciences of Havana, Cuba; Susan Schneider, biopsychologist at the University of the Pacific, California; Peter Godfrey-Smith, philosopher of science at the University of Sydney, Australia; Sheila Jasanoff, professor of technology ethics at Harvard Kennedy School; Lee McIntyre, philosopher and researcher at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and lecturer at Harvard: Julia Galef, founder of the Center for Applied Rationality and many others. In addition, in a special “speaker’s corner”, planned in front of the historic Caffè Pedrocchi, researchers and scholars will answer in 15 minutes the ‘big questions’ posed by the public on the Cicap social media regarding the science of the future: genetics, medicine, space, technology, sociology and neuroscience, in a series of events moderated by popularizer Marco Martinelli .