Short Abstract

In the week that science and technology researchers from around the world arrive in Kraków for EASST2026, we're opening that conversation up to the city. One evening, four talks, one bar.

Description

AI writes job applications. An algorithm decides where the ambulance goes. The city installs sensors nobody can see, which see everything. Technological change doesn't only happen in a lab, it happens in Wesoła, in Kazimierz, on the number 502 bus, and in the queue at the clinic.

SCI BARS borrows from the British science in a bar tradition and from French cafés scientifiques: research leaves the lecture hall and pulls up a stool. No lectern, no slides crowded with graphs, no sentence beginning "as the meta-analysis demonstrated." Someone talks about their work the way they'd tell a friend about it. Then the audience asks questions, and the questions run the evening, not the schedule.

There's one rule: if someone didn't follow, that's not their fault.

Four speakers (from any career stage or outside academia) will lead a talk about where science, technology and the future meet society. We're interested in, among others:

• algorithms and automation in everyday life - work, care, housing, transport

• who imagines the future and how: forecasts, scenarios, promises, disappointments

• bodies, health and data - from health apps to AI - assisted diagnosis

• climate, energy, infrastructure: the technologies meant to save us (or not)

• the city as a laboratory - sensors, platforms, "smart" solutions and what they cost

• technological promises from the past that never arrived, and what they teach us

As long as there's real research or hands-on experience behind the talk, you don't need to be attending EASST2026. You don't need to live in Kraków. [Apply via link below]

Four 15-minute talks, a short round of questions after each, then an open conversation at the bar with nobody moderating too hard. Talks are in Polish or English, depending on the speaker; the audience will be mixed, local and international. Slides aren't needed; if you really want them, three maximum.