Successful Researchers’ Night comes to a close: “Incredibly fun to see the interest”

Rannís’ Researchers’ Night 2026 took place at Laugardalshöll on Saturday, September 26, and was a great success. As usual, Reykjavik University had a dedicated exhibition area where members of the university community offered visitors an insight into research and work at the university.

The Researchers’ Night was very well attended, and people of all ages were eager to learn about a wide range of topics, including wind energy, electrons, programming, computer-assisted pronunciation training, zebrafish neural networks, the use of optical fiber to predict volcanic activity, and developments in adolescent mental health over the past two decades.

Þórhildur Halldórsdóttir, an associate professor in RU’s Department of Psychology, says it was particularly gratifying to see how many people visited the department’s booth at the Researchers’ Night to learn about developments in adolescent mental health over the past 20 years.

“It was incredibly fun to see how interested people were, and many of the things that have changed over the past twenty years came as a surprise to both young people and adults. We also learned a great deal from the conversations and got many good ideas about what would be interesting to research further,” says Þórhildur.

And that is by no means the full list. Visitors were introduced to electromagnetic technology for wireless communication systems, while the Department of Sport Science measured jumping and grip strength. The Institute of Biomedical and Neural Engineering (IBNE), in collaboration with Landspítali University Hospital, also invited visitors to control a computer game using only their minds by connecting electrodes to their heads.

In addition, Skema introduced a number of programming courses available to children and teenagers. Children could try their hand at block-based programming and have a go at the video game Minecraft.

Guessing passwords and communications behind the scenes

The team behind the Frostbyte research lab, a joint project between RU and the University of Iceland, had plenty to showcase at its booth.

“We presented research and projects in the field of cybersecurity carried out by BSc, master’s, and doctoral students at Frostbyte. For the children, we had a game where they had to guess passwords, highlighting the importance of strong passwords. We also had two posters. The first was based on a BSc thesis and a research paper about how cybersecurity culture affects the security of organizations.

The second poster was about Frostsheild, which is part of a larger project aimed at building a monitoring system to predict cyber threats. We also displayed slides about students’ master’s projects and research papers at Frostbyte, some of which have been accepted for conferences around the world.

Furthermore, we had a router that visitors could connect to and use to see, visually, what their devices were connecting to and communicating with. The purpose was to show people what their devices are actually doing and how much communication is taking place behind the scenes,” says Marteinn Lundi Kjartansson, a master’s student in cybersecurity at RU and member of Frostbyte.