Garik  Israelian : The best Starmus was held in Armenia

ArmInfo.As a result of the  global festival of science communication and art  Starmus VI, the leading universities of Armenia signed more than 10 memorandums,  established personal ties with world-famous scientists. Chief of  Staff to the Prime Minister of Armenia Arayik Harutyunyan stated this  during a press conference, summing up the results of the global  festival held in September.

In this regard, he remarked: "I hope that these ties will materialize  in the form of various models of cooperation, publications, launching  laboratories, etc."

Harutyunyan said that within the framework of preliminary discussions  with Starmus, the possibilities of holding small-scale scientific  events in Armenia, as well as organizing large-scale events every 2-3  years to sum up the results were considered. In this regard, the head  of the Prime Minister's Office noted that the festival first of all  aroused interest among schoolchildren. In this vein, he said that  within the framework of the Starmus camp, on the territory of which  there were 19 pavilions of various directions, 48 eminent speakers,  21 musical groups, 14 teachers, and over 80 thousand visitors, most  of whom were school students, took part. "I am sure that some of  these children will be involved in the scientific field in the  future," Harutyunyan said.

According to him, the government attaches special importance to the  development of science.  In particular, over 4 and half years, the  volume of state budget financing increased by 150%. Today, the  government has the opportunity to double and even triple the amount  allocated to the scientific sector, however, as the official noted,  this requires an appropriate level of development of the abilities of  the scientific community.

In turn, founder of Starmus, astrophysicist Garik Israelian added  that such a problem exists not only in Armenia, but is also  widespread in the world. <Funding should be synchronized with  capacity. When water is poured onto asphalt, it is not absorbed by  it, another thing is when it is poured onto the soil>, the scientist  noted.

Summing up Starmus VI, he positively assessed the festival in Armenia  in every sense, noting in this regard the dynamic work of the  festival team, the interaction and mutual influence of students and  the scientific community, the content of the festival program, etc.   <Probably, Starmus <was born under a lucky star>, because everything  went well. But, I should say that we initially had ambitions, and I  said that the best Starmus will be held in Armenia>, he concluded.

This year Starmus was held from September 4 -9 s and was  dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the first landing of the Mars 3  space station on Mars.  It is noteworthy that Mars 3 was transported  to the Red Planet by the famous Armenian engineer Alexander  Kemurjian's Prop-M robot.  World-renowned scientists, Nobel  laureates, astronauts, musicians and artists are already visiting  Armenia. It is a platform that unites figures of science, culture and  art, within which they present their knowledge, experience and latest  discoveries to the public in publicly accessible formats.  The  world-famous STARMUS festival is associated with Stephen Hawking,  Brian May, Alexei Leonov and other world-famous famous names, has  been held since 2011 and combines science, education, art and  technology. STARMUS festival was founded by astrophysicist Garik  Israelian and astrophysicist Brian May, guitarist of the legendary  band "Queen".  Their unification around one platform makes it  possible to highlight the problems of our time and discuss solutions.