Imperial Festival is open! Get your science fix at this year's event

Visitors are treated to robot surgeons, colourful chemistry, tasty street food, and terrific talks and performances as #ImpFest gets underway.

Drizzle couldn't dampen the spirits of more than 500 scientists and performers as they began to entertain the crowds descending on South Kensington.

This year's Imperial Festival - the College's seventh - celebrates the Year of Engineering with a special Enginuity Zone. Other new zones include the Hands-On Zone for kids of all ages, the Discovering Worlds Zone and the Reflection Zone.

Alongside returning favourites like the Robot Zone, the Superbugs Zone and the Green Futures Zone, this year's Festival features more than just great science demonstrations.

(Although those are still pretty great.)

The street food market offers hungry visitors a world of eating options, and the performance tent returns to showcase our students' many talents.

There is also an extensive talks programme. This year, the talks kicked off with Call the Widwife actor Stephen McGann talking about his new book Flesh and Blood.

In conversation with Imperial Professor Maggie Dallman, Stephen discussed how the book charts the medical mysteries of the McGann family, from the mid-1800s, where they fled the Irish potato famine to end up in poverty in Liverpool, through to the present day.

The talk was live streamed, and you can catch up on it in the video below.

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Top image: Credit Owen Billcliffe