To bring researchers and science closer to the public and stimulate interest in researcher career, especially among young people,  the European Researchers’ Night takes place every year.

Due to the outbreak of Coronavirus (COVID-19) disease, the event of the European Researchers’ Night 2020 in Latvia took place on April 30th, 2021 in a 100% virtual format. The topic of this year was "Diversity of Science for Future". Researchers at the Latvian Institute of Organic Synthesis gave numerous short lectures about drug discovery, medicinal chemistry, and the topic of relevance - COVID-19.

Prof. Raivis Žalubovskis, the project's SPRINGBOARD coordinator gave a lecture "Fight against bad bacteria". In his lecture, Ravis Žalubovskis introduced participants to the problem and scope of bacterial resistance as well as presented the SPRINGBOARD project and its four scientific approaches to tackle it.

After the lecture, Raivis Žalubovskis said:

“It was a challenge for me to talk about scientific topics in a very simple way. I tried my best to bring the idea to each participant no matter if it is a pupil or student.”

The European Researchers’ Night is an initiative promoted by the European Commission since 2005 and it involves thousands of researchers and research institutions in all European countries.