Long Night of the Sciences
Visit us on 28 June 2025 from 5 pm in Berlin-Buch
Long Night
The event is made for science enthusiasts of all ages, there are:
- laboratory tours
- hands-on experiments
- lectures
- science shows
- ... and much more
The Long Night of Sciences takes place once a year on a Saturday in June. With our locations on the Buch Campus and in Berlin-Mitte we participated on June 22, 2024.
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Highlights Buch
The MDC program ranges from interactive experiments and shows to the opportunity to look over the shoulder of scientists in the laboratory. Some of the highlights are presented here.
Lab tours
Scientists at the Campus Buch invite you to their research labs to give you a glimpse into the future of medicine. They will present current biomedical research – topics and methods – and explain what we have learned so far about the “human system”. The number of participants is limited for all tours at the Max Delbrück Center.
Registration required: central info point
- Unraveling beta cell biology to combat diabetes
- 6:30 pm | 8 pm | 9:30 pm | ages 12 and up
How does diabetes develop and how can we better treat it? The Sander Lab investigates how insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells develop and function to uncover the causes of diabetes and pioneer new treatments. Using human stem cell-based organoid models, advanced genetic tools, and computational approaches, the team develops new models of the disease to explore the molecular mechanisms behind beta cell formation, maintenance, and dysfunction. Their research paves the way for innovative therapies to restore beta cell function and improve diabetes care.
Registration required: central info point in the MDC.C building.
- Neuromuscular mini-organs: Experience research first hand
- 6:30 pm | ages 12 and up
What are mini-organs (organoids) and why are ours so special? During the interactive lab tour, visitors will learn how we produce neuromuscular mini-organs and what significance they have for research into serious diseases. They will gain an insight into how we work at sterile benches, experience the production process with a robot, and be allowed to change the culture medium of the mini-organs themselves and compare their accuracy with robot’s precision.
Registration required: central info point in the MDC.C building.
Cafe Scientifique
Pick a science topic that needs to be discussed – such as antibodies or genome editing. Add some coffee, take a seat, and let dedicated scientists serve you everything. Et voilà – the recipe for Café Scientifique is as simple as it is ingenious. Enjoy!
Location: MDC.C foyer or terrace
Science meets art
Science is matter-of-fact and art is emotional – is that true? Research and work in the arts are both experimental and creative processes. Many scientists also paint, perform music, and take photographs. Some of them exhibit their artwork on the Buch campus.
Exhibition stands & other
- The accessible artery
- Heart model | 4 pm - 11 pm
Over a length of around 150,000 kilometers, our blood vessels form a widely branched network that reaches every corner of the body. Arteries not only supply tissues with oxygen and nutrients, they can also become blocked and cause heart attacks. Arterial cells also exchange information with all other organs. But what does an artery look like? Together with experts, guests can physically walk through a giant model of an artery to learn about our research.
Highlights Mitte
Lab tours
Scientists at the Max Delbrück Center invite you to their research labs to give you a glimpse into the future of medicine. They will present current biomedical research – topics and methods – and explain what we have learned so far about the “human system”. The number of participants is limited for all tours at the Max Delbrück Center. Registration: central info point.
- Accompanying cells on their developmental journey
- 6 pm | 9 pm | 12 years and older
During embryonic development, a fertilized egg develops into a complete organism with many specialized cell types and tissues within a few weeks. But how do our cells know whether they should become a heart, nerve or liver cell? And how do cells communicate with each other to form complex tissues and organs? We will show you how we find out, using complex computer models based on single-cell sequencing data and organoids. Join us on this special journey!
Registration required: central info point on the ground floor
- How can you fit Berlin’s TV tower inside a Kinder Surprise?
- 5:30 pm | 7 pm | 8:30 pm | 12 years and older
If you stretch the DNA molecule from a single human cell all the way out, it would be about two meters long. However, the nucleus of a human cell, which contains the DNA, is only about six μm in diameter – this is as small as a Kinder Surprise in comparison to Berlin’s TV tower! How does DNA fit inside such a small space and how does DNA folding affect gene activity and the biology of our cells? We at the Pombo lab use state-of-the-art techniques to study the role of chromatin origami in health and disease.
Registration required: central info point on the ground floor
- Single-cell approaches for personalized medicine
- 7:30 pm | 9:30 pm | 12 years and older
A tour and robot demo of the Single-cell Focus Area labs: Our body is made up of trillions of cells and every day they work together to perform the functions of life. However, when these cells go rogue, disease can strike! To better understand these cells, we can now look at them one by one, using modern single-cell technologies! Join us to learn how we look at each cell to understand the genetic and molecular changes that keep us healthy, or not.
Registration: central info point at the ground floor
- From idea to result – virus research and infection models
- 7:00 pm | 10:00 pm | 12 years and older
What is the path from a research idea to a tangible result? Which aspects do we have to consider, what challenges do we have to overcome? In this tour, we will give you insights into our daily work along these questions. We will explain how we go from extensive literature searches to the selection of adequate infection models to bioinformatical data analysis. We will also show you experimental lab methods from single-cell sequencing to tissue section analysis.
Registration required: central info point on the ground floor
- Pathogen monitoring in the Berlin wastewater
- 6:30 pm | 8 pm | 9:30 pm | 12 years and older
The Berlin water authorities (Berliner Wasserbetriebe) are regularly measuring the coronavirus SARS-CoV2 in the Berlin wastewater. This allows us to monitor the spread of the virus and the emergence of new variants – regardless of people testing themselves. But not only corona can be detected in wastewater. We can identify any virus that is a nuisance to us and causes flu or diarrhea, for example. In this lab tour, we show how get clean measurement data from murky waters.
Music
- AI can replicate Bach, but not Händel (yet)
- 8 - 9 pm | Daniel Leon
Because of conceptual similarities between the multiscale nature of music and biology, some algorithms used to process biological data can be adapted to compose music. Daniel Leon will explain and demonstrate on the piano, how such an AI-based algorithm can replicate Bach’s chorales so well, that experts cannot distinguish between his actual compositions and those generated by AI. During his presentation, he will also dissect compositions from Händel to show why some music composition is so complex, that AI cannot reproduce it, at least not yet.
Pub Quiz
- Of molecules, music and medals - a pub quiz for know-it-alls
- 11 pm - 12 am
Did you pay attention during the presentations and lab tours? Are you familiar with sports, music, the big and small things of everyday life? Then compete against each other in small groups in our PubQuiz and put your knowledge to the test! Everyone can contribute and join in the guessing, the focus is on the team: whether expert or rookie, student or teacher, janitor or manager - the best team wins!
Exhibition stands, hands-on experiments, children's program
- How new AI technologies improve life sciences
- 5 - 11 pm
Can a chatbot help oncologists to find the right therapy for a particular patient? We develop and train AI tools to analyze genetic data and identify key markers for diagnosis and treatment – to improve patient outcomes and advance precision medicine. One main focus area is discovering targets to treat solid tumors. In this case, we are using language models to interpret and solve data analysis problems. Curious about how this works? At our booth, you can interact with our AI tools via terminals. These are chatbots or other large language model-based technologies.
- Lab Olympics
- 5 pm - 12 am
Pipetting, measuring, finding information – in our Lab Olympics you can put your abilities up to a test and find out whether you have what it takes to master the every-day lab work. A lab selfie is included.
Retrospect
Videos
