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BioTiles at Trieste Next: 3 days dedicated to research
Three days of meetings, workshops and stands filled the center of Trieste for the fifteenth edition of Trieste Next, the scientific research festival, which closed on Sunday 27 September. This year's theme, "The shape of thought", spanned neuroscience, artificial intelligence, health and the environment, with over three hundred scientists involved and dozens of exhibition spaces open to the public. Among them was also the OGS stand, the National Institute of Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics and lead partner of BioTiles, where the project presented itself to festival visitors.
At the booth, all this became something you could touch. On the table there was the coconut-fiber biosubstrate tile, shown up close to visitors. Those who stopped by could also find out how a tile is made with lagoon sediments and coconut fiber, trying their hand at the step-by-step preparation. A simple way to understand that behind a research project there are real materials and concrete actions, often much closer to us than you might think.
To look deeper, there was a microscope with some samples of the tile: a way to see what the material is like at a scale you can’t catch with the naked eye.
There was also time for play. The lagoon crossword invited adults and children to test what they know about the lagoon ecosystem, between one festival event and the next.
Behind BioTiles there is a partnership of six Italian and Slovenian entities: in addition to OGS, the Slovenian National Institute of Biology, the DOPPS association for the study and observation of birds, the Strunjan Landscape Park, Mimma Dreams APS and the Municipality of Grado. The project does not live only in the lab. In recent months there have been the kick-off meeting at OGS, the training days between Trieste and Koper, the identification of the experimental sites and, on 10 July, the first public excursion along the Stella River and the Marano Lagoon.
The pathway will lead to concrete results: a graphic representation of the sediment erosion and deposition model, an operational protocol that can be replicated in other transitional environments of the programme area, and the creation of a lagoon HUB that gathers the currently fragmented knowledge on biodiversity loss. All this together with a participatory process involving bodies, associations, stakeholders and citizens, to arrive at shared guidelines on the sustainable management of lagoons.
Trieste Next was a valuable opportunity to take BioTiles out of the labs and meet a broad, curious audience. The project will continue until May 2027, with pilot actions at the demonstration sites and the building of the lagoon biodiversity HUB. The festival has already set the date for the 2027 edition, from 24 to 26 September.