The sixth edition of the Medical Science Festival, organised by Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio in Bologna and Genus Bononiae. Musei nella città, in cooperation with Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, took place on October 2nd, 3rd, 8th, 9th,10th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 2020 and was dedicated to COVID-19 (Lessons from Medicine).
During the Festival, Genus Bononiae introduced its new web streaming platform: a simulated reality which accompanies the audience to the Sala della Cultura, through a virtual tour around Palazzo Pepoli, where the Museo della Storia di Bologna is set, with a museographic set-up by Marco Bellini and a graphic design by Italo Lupi. Taddeo Pepoli in person welcomed guests in his house, where antiquity and innovation merge together.
The Festival was a unique opportunity to safely listen to the most eminent scientists and international experts, and analyze all the roles that medicine has to play in the context of a worldwide emergency, which will force inevitable changes on our usual health, social and economic models.
Among the speakers were some of the most brilliant minds in the medical-scientific field. For example: Bruce Beutler, winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine; Pierluigi Viale, Head of the Department of Medicine and Surgery at the University of Bologna; Alberto Mantovani, Scientific Director of Humanitas; Rino Rappuoli, Professor of Vaccines Research at the Imperial College of London; Giovanni Rezza, President of the Prevention Department at the Ministry of Health; Andrea Crisanti, Professor of Microbiology at the University of Padova; the American epidemiologist John Ioannidis; Edward Holmes from the University of Sidney; Michele Gelfand, psychologist and Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland; Giovanni De Girolamo, Director of the Epidemiological and Evaluative Psychiatry Operating Unit at the IRCCS Fatebenefratelli of Brescia; and so on.
The 2020 edition of the Festival was also an opportunity to watch and listen to the most distinguished lectures of the past editions once again, such as the speeches given by the winners of the Nobel Prize Robert Lefkowitz, Tim Hunt, Louis Ignarro, Amartya Sen, Aaron Ciechanover, Michael Rosbash, John Gurdon ed Eric Kandel.
