NODES and UNIGHT 2025: research, innovation and sustainability in dialogue with the city
In Turin, an intense weekend of research took shape with UNIGHT – The European Researchers’ Night, which turned the city into a vast open-air laboratory. Over 350 activities animated the Castello del Valentino, the Botanical Garden and many other city spaces with exhibitions, experiments, performances and talks designed to bring everyone – from children to adults – closer to the world of research.
Promoted by the Politecnico di Torino and the University of Turin, with the support of the Municipality and the Region, the initiative highlighted not only scientific achievements but also the everyday work of attempts, obstacles and errors. It was an invitation to see science as a living and imperfect process that grows precisely through its challenges. Within this rich programme, NODES – Nord Ovest Digitale e Sostenibile presented activities that combined innovation, sustainability and participation, through exhibitions, labs and institutional stands.
On the evening of Friday 26 September, the exhibition “Communicating Emotionally, Digitally, Sustainably”, curated by the Department of Management “Valter Cantino” of the University of Turin, guided visitors through communication strategies in the Food & Beverage sector, showing how language itself can become a driver of innovation.
Equally engaging was the Politecnico di Torino workshop “Engineering Challenges for Respiratory Health”, which presented a prototype for a home ventilator. Demonstrations drew dozens of people eager to discover first-hand an innovation designed to improve quality of life.
The NODES activities did not stop despite Friday evening’s rain: they continued the next day under alternating clouds and sunshine, ending with a radiant evening – a perfect weather metaphor for research itself, made of obstacles, trials and problems but also of breakthroughs, discoveries and successes.
On Saturday 27 September, the NODES institutional stand took centre stage, welcoming children and adults to a Treasure Hunt in the park. Visitors followed clues, answered quizzes and curiosities about the ecosystem, and collected gadgets to take home as a tangible memory of research.
The activity involved hundreds of participants: children, families and students played with enthusiasm, navigating wrong answers, correct solutions and many small triumphs. Many left a written thought about what impressed them most or how they imagine the research of the future – a true mosaic of ideas and hopes to nurture and bring to life.
The 2025 Researchers’ Night thus confirmed that science, when narrated and explained with passion, can forge authentic bonds with people. Not only through prototypes and technologies, but through dialogue, emotions and collective engagement.
The next challenge is clear: to transform the curiosity sparked during the event into lasting interest and concrete pathways, so that innovation continues to generate value for the young generations of today and the territories of tomorrow.
