On March 30, 2025, the Center for Taste and Feeding Sciences hosted the Experimentarium. The program included mini-conferences, interviews, laboratory tours, and interactive workshops. Visitors had the opportunity to explore the inner workings of research from a unique perspective.
They discovered a variety of topics, such as comets explaining the origins of the solar system, personalized cancer treatments, and ways to improve children’s vocabulary acquisition. The young researchers present once again offered a glimpse into their work, far removed from traditional academic formats. Participants were both privileged witnesses and active participants in the research process: they asked questions during the conferences, explored the laboratories, took part in science activities with their children, learned about the career paths of three researchers interviewed in public, and shared their ideas directly with the researchers.
The exhibition “In the Shadow of Gestures” was also (re)discovered, highlighting the gestures, techniques, and expertise of the men and women working behind the scenes in laboratories: the engineers and technicians.
Among the young researchers present, Pierre Hardy, a doctoral student at the ICB, presented his work on comets and their role in the history of our solar system.“The comets in our solar system, 4.6 billion years old, contain molecules trapped in ice. When they approach the sun, the ice melts and releases these molecules, which scientists can analyze to better understand the formation of the solar system. Pierre uses telescopes to capture the light from comets and analyze the different colors it contains. By identifying the light signature of the molecules, he hopes to discover new cometary molecules and thus expand our knowledge of the origin of our solar system without sending probes to every comet…”
