Curious guests, enthusiastic NMI staff: Successful open house

Creative presentation of research with alpaca cookies, pipetted institute logos, and plush antibodies: Last Friday's (September 19) open house was an all-around successful event. A good 300 visitors took advantage of the opportunity to take a look behind the scenes at the NMI.

A wide range of topics from everyday research at the NMI

What does actually happen in a clean room, and why is there a room with yellow light? What can the microscopes at the Nanoanalytics Center (NanoZ) reveal? How can a novel tissue phantom improve the development of medical devices and training in hospitals? During guided tours and at information stands, NMI staff provided a wide range of insights into their work.

Creative information stands

This generated a great deal of interest among visitors. Between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m., around 300 people visited the main building and the nearby NanoZ. There were almost continuous discussions at the 13 information stands, with guests attracted not least by many creative eye-catchers: microscopes to look through, a throwing game for nanopores, images of pulsating cells, plush alpacas, and alpaca-shaped cookies. This made the often complex research at the NMI tangible even for laypeople.

High demand necessitates spontaneous rescheduling

The guided tours of the building were particularly popular—so popular, in fact, that a total of six additional tours were offered during the course of the day. But even with these extra tours, almost all of them attracted more participants than had been planned.

Many thanks to everyone who made this day a success – the many interested guests as well as the NMI staff, who presented their work with such enthusiasm.