From September to November, Armenia will host several forums, conferences and exhibitions dedicated to the popularization of science and modern technologies: artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science, bioengineering and game development. Naked Science tells you about the most important events of the Yerevan techno-autumn.
This year it is dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the study of Mars, so a significant part of the speeches, in particular the entire program on September 7-8, is devoted to the history of exploration and modern missions on the Red Planet. In particular, the lecture “50 years on Mars: from Mars-3 and Mariner-9 to Starship” will be delivered by astrophysicist Louis Friedman, who founded the Planetary Society together with Carl Sagan in 1980.
Many Nobel laureates will perform at the festival: neurophysicist Edward Moser will give a lecture “Brain and Music”, Donna Strickland will answer the question “How to cut glass with lasers”, Emmanuel Charpentier will talk about “The Power of microbiology”, chemist Kurt Wuterich will explain how “mRNA and other biological macromolecules support the work of our bodies”, astrophysicist Michel Major He will describe “Billions of Planets of the Universe”, George Smoot will reveal “The Origin of the Universe”, and Kip Thorne will perform together with the poet Leah Halloran.
The event will be attended by the famous space popularizer astronaut Chris Hadfield, one of the most famous artificial intelligence researchers today Bernhard Schelkopf, as well as astrophysicist musician Brian May, guitarist of the band Queen. On Monday, September 5, the Stephen Hawking Medal for the Popularization of Science, which Hawking founded together with Brian May and Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, will be presented.
September 23-25 — Game Conference Armenia
The Game Conference Armenia conference is dedicated to the comprehensive development of games: from idea to promotion. The event will bring together both experienced game developers and beginners, designers, programmers, producers, sound specialists and just game lovers.
Among the speakers are representatives of French, Canadian and Finnish computer, console and mobile game developers: Focus Entertainment (A Plague Tale, Insurgency: Sandstorm, Evil West, World War Z: Aftermath), Remedy Entertainment (Max Payne, Quantum Break, Alan Wake), Kabam (mobile games Marvel Contest of Champions and Disney Mirrorverse) and Rovio (Angry Birds).
September 30 — October 2 — Digitec Summit 22 and Digitec Expo 22
Digitec 22 is the largest conference and exhibition of new technologies in the region. It has been held since 2005. Last year, she hosted 100 companies and more than 60 thousand guests. The event is specially held on the same week as the GIF22 Global Innovation Forum, so that speakers and participants can attend both events.
This year’s theme is “How developing countries with big technological ambitions can compete in the global market.” Among the speakers and participants are heads and founders of companies from Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Taiwan and, of course, Armenia.
The founders and representatives of GrittGene Therapeutics & Proone Labs, PicsArt, Krispos, ServiceTitan and others will speak.
October 5-6 — GIF22 Global Innovation Forum: Life Altering technologies
Global Innovation Forum (GIF22) is the main event of techno-autumn in Yerevan. A large-scale event combining science and business. Leading specialists in medicine, biotechnology, artificial intelligence and machine learning, inventors and patent authors, as well as entrepreneurs, representatives of governments, international organizations, financial institutions and CEOs of large companies from more than 20 countries will come to the site. In particular, researchers from Moderna Inc., representatives of Flagship Pioneering, AI Fund, McKinsey & Company, AECOM, World Bank, ABBY, Syniverse Technologies and leading Silicon Valley startups will arrive.
This year, the Global Innovation Forum will be held under the slogan “Life-changing technologies”. The main speaker (visionary speech) of the event will be Nubar Afeyan, co-founder of Moderna, which has developed one of the most successful RNA vaccines against coronavirus, responsible for the global COVID-19 pandemic. He is the author of more than 100 patents and co-founder of more than 70 startups in the field of biological sciences and technologies. Afeyan founded the Flagship Pioneering company, which creates, develops and finances biomedical companies. They have already 50 drugs in the clinical development stage.