On 28 September the ceremony hall, Bldg. X hosted the opening ceremony of the NAUKA 0+ Research Festival. School students, their parents and teachers from the city and regional schools had been invited there. Special guests of the fest became school students from Voskresenskii, Romanovskii, Perelyubskii, and Turkovskii Districts. The ceremony hall was crowded with all the people desiring to attend the intelligent holiday.

Before the opening ceremony the school students took photos in the photo zone in front of Bldg. X. Due to it the festival members made even more interested in Saratov University, where many of them would like to study after graduation.

The host was a master degree student of the SSU Faculty of Law Aleksei Karev. He announced the festival programme, which included various exciting popular scientific events organised every hour.

SSU Rector, Professor Aleksei N. Chumachenko welcomed the guests. He reminded that the first research festival was held in MSU in 2006.

‘Young people and school students became so engrossed by the idea, therefore, other regions also decided to organise the events like that, and the festival became All-Russian. Being one of the oldest universities in the country and the last imperial university Saratov University could not help but support the idea. Today SSU is one the leading universities in Russia. We confirm the status of a national research university showing good results in international rankings. Thus, SSU holds the 17^th position out of 25 Russian universities included into the QS Ranking. The most important rating indicators are the education and research ones. SSU takes the 9^th post among all the Russian universities, according to the h-index rating. Therefore, you are lucky to meet here wonderful researchers and great professors well-known in the scientific community. We have prepared 55 research platforms for you. We hope that you will be interested there and they will help you choose your profession. I wish you to have fun!’ said the rector.

Also the festival members were welcomed by Chair of the Committee on Education of the Saratov City Municipal Structure Larisa A. Revutskaya.

‘You will be convinced that it may be difficult but still exciting to conduct the research. Besides, I would like to congratulate the university I graduated from on its 110^th anniversary! During all these years a few generations of its professors have been working really hard, achieving many goals, showing great results in research, and they have always been open-minded. We try to actively cooperate with SSU; thus, we organise the school for endowed children and research-to-practice conferences together. Saratov school students can use your research laboratories and prepare for regional and All-Russian olympiads there. And today they have a unique opportunity to gain new knowledge and choose their profession.’

After the welcoming speeches the audience enjoyed a surprise prepared by Chair of the Department of General and Inorganic Chemistry Dmitrii G. Cherkasov. As the General Assembly of the United Nations had proclaimed 2019 as the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements the chair delivered a research report about Dmitrii Mendeleev in the stand-up manner. During his speech he showed spectacular experiments and proved why Mendeleev’s table is called ‘the universal research language’. Moreover, the festival guests enjoyed the videos about the event and performance items of the members of the SSU Student Club.

There were so many people eager to see the opening ceremony that is was shown once again for the newcomers. You can also watch the video broadcasting here.  

The participants could take part in the events at SSU Bldgs. I, III, V, IX, X, XI as well as Student Square and the multifunctional sport ground.