Night of Discoveries
The Night of Discoveries is an annual event in Leiden, focusing on science and culture. The Young Academy Leiden is a recurring contributor to the Night of Discoveries.
Night of Discoveries & YAL 2025
Large Language Models: Experience Energy Consumption
Last week (Sept 20th), YAL was present at Leiden’s Night of Discoveries. This year, participants were invited to generate the required wattage to be able to allow the production of an image using a large language model.
Our room was equipped with a race bike connected to a wattage meter that measured the wattage of each participant. On a large screen, participants could see the progress towards the wattage required for generating their image. Participants were asked to give a prompt of their choice, and in the background the query was made to a large language model. We worked with publicly available estimates of the required kWh for generating images of a specific resolution.
Beyond being a fun exhibition where participants to a science fair were unexpectedly challenged to jump on the home-trainer setup, our goal was to raise awareness about the energy consumption that comes with using this technology. While there is a place for Large Language Models as an assistant to humans, they should be used with reflection. We should always be aware of energy-usage implications, as well as other aspects, such as copyright concerns, privacy issues and the fact that this technology often makes mistakes. This is often easily recognizable in an image, but in general it holds that if one can’t verify the correctness of an answer that is being produced, one probably should not use it.
This year, we collaborated with LIACS students who have developed the interface and operated it during the event. We consider this collaboration a success, and should explore possibilities for this in the future again.
Night of Discoveries & YAL 2023
Like previous editions, also in this edition of the Night of Discoveries, Young Academy Leiden filled part of the program. Our goal was to share our stage with our community, and invited people from our community to suggest topics that they wanted to present. As such, the topic of our event was “Meet the researcher of tomorrow”, in which young academics had the ability to present their work to a layman audience, followed by a panel discussion tailored towards the questions: How can your research help the citizens of Leiden, and how can the citizens of Leiden engage in your research.
In our selection of presenters, we prioritized people that were at the time of subscription not yet a YAL member, and aimed for diversity among faculties.
19:15 - Scientific Artificial Intelligence for Astrophysics
Speaker: Samira Rezaei (Science), moderator: Julia Cramer (Science), panelist: Thomas Moerland (Science)
20:15 Tax havens - what can we do to prevent them
Speaker: Federica Casano (Law), moderator: Thomas Moerland (Science), panelist: Cristiana Strava (Humanities)
21:15 - Mental health research in the next decade - new technologies
Speaker: Eiko Fried (FSW), moderator: Hilde van Meegdenburg (FSW), panelist: Nienke de Graef (LUMC)
22:15 - Fighting Climate Change in Coastal Cities: Harnessing Citizen Science
Speaker: Cristiana Strava (Humanities), Moderator: Lauren Fonteyn (Humanities), panelist: Hilde van Meegdenburg (FSW)
23:15 - Health and the right time to exercise
Speaker: Milena Schönke (LUMC), moderator: Francesca Arici (Science), panelist: Thomas Moerland (Science)
Night of Discoveries & YAL 2022
Young Academy Leiden’s interactive escape box Discover the rich history of Leiden University by playing this interactive escape box. Members of the Young Academy Leiden have joined forces to develop a group escape game that puts various scientific disciplines in the spotlights. Join and try to solve brain teasers and challenging puzzles. The eight puzzles are all about groundbreaking discovers of Leiden scientists and one by one bring you closer to the denouement, a key moment in the history of the university. This interactive escape room experience is for anyone who would like to learn about Leiden University and her greatest scientists in a playful manner.
Night of Discoveries & YAL 2019
The Young Academy Leiden contributed to the Night of Discoveries 2019, which took place on September 21st. At our stand, visitors could test their knowledge and attitudes in the domain of the three themes of our Next444 project: Data & Technology, Sustainability, and Equality, Fairness & Justice.
To create awareness regarding sustainability, we allowed visitors to calculate their ecological footprint. Visitors could also test how gender (un)biased they are via an implicit bias test. Another game asked visitors to distinguish real faces from AI-generated faces.
