Chicago Science Festival 2015. (Monica Metzler / Illinois Science Council)

The second annual Chicago Science Festival begins Friday and promises a treat for the scientifically curious.

“The goal of the festival is to raise people’s understanding and appreciation of the truly extraordinary breadth and depth of science research that goes on right here in the Chicago area,” says Monica Metzler, Founder and Executive Director of the Illinois Science Council, which is organizing the event.

“We’ve got four major research universities. We’ve got six science museums. There are two national laboratories – billions of dollars of research being done at Fermilab and Argonne National Laboratory,” says Metzler. “The other thing that people often don’t recognize is the zoos here – Lincoln Park Zoo and Brookfield Zoo are internationally recognized research zoos doing work in species conservation.”

The festival, which is being held at the Merchandise Mart, kicks off on Friday with a discussion on how to engineer a scientific breakthrough. Speakers from the University of Chicago in the fields of psychology, neuroscience and physics will talk about their breakthrough ideas. That will be followed by a keynote address by Facebook executive Monika Bickert on how collaborations with research universities are helping to solve pressing social issues.

If that might sound like a worthy but possibly ponderous topic, Saturday’s range of talks and events would seem to cater to just about anyone: There will be presentations on the trials and tribulations of the Monarch butterfly; using microscopy to unravel the mystery of the paints used by Picasso; and the science behind black holes and the stunning recent discovery of gravitational waves predicted more than 100 years ago by Einstein.