This year, the Science Festival of the South of Russia within the framework of the Lecture Hall of the Russian society "Znanie" was attended by special guests: Russian statesman, Candidate of Sociological Sciences, Deputy Director General of the Russian Society "Znanie", director of the Mashuk Knowledge Center Anton Serikov and multiple world and European champion, twice Olympic medalist, TV presenter Irina Slutskaya.

Anton Vladimirovich delivered a lecture on "Mentoring as a pedagogical technology and management style," and Irina Eduardovna formulated the topic of her speech as "The Cascade of a sports career."

The President of the Southern Federal University, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Education, Professor Marina Borovskaya took an active part in the business program of the festival. She held a master class for students and graduates of the Specialized Educational and Scientific Center of the Southern Federal District. The master class was timed to coincide with the presentation of the Scientific Bridge project. Marina Alexandrovna told how the university can help a modern student meet the demand for in-demand competencies in a changing socio-economic environment.

The President of the SFedU also took part in a panel discussion on mentoring in science, in a meeting of the Council of the Educational cluster of the South of Russia and the School of Social Mentoring from the charitable foundation "Family".

Vasily Vysokov, Doctor of Economics, Professor, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Center-Invest Bank, delivered a lecture "Don Creative" at the Festival site. During the lecture, he reminded the students about the possibilities of the Smart Scholarship program, a competition from the Center—Invest bank. Over the twenty-one years of the Smart Scholarship competition, more than five thousand SFedU students have become scholarship holders.

Various events were held on the business agenda of the festival, among them the Forum of Student Scientific Societies of the South of Russia. During the plenary session, vice-rectors of Rostov universities for scientific work discussed the role of SSS in achieving the objectives of the Decade of Science and Technology. 

An honest and open dialogue on the popularization of science in the media space was a discussion organized by the information partner of the Southern Federal University, the media holding RBC South and North Caucasus. The discussion about science and its promotion in the media attracted students of the Institute of Philology, Journalism and Intercultural Communication of the Southern Federal University, representatives of the university's student media, as well as representatives of regional and federal media. The leading specialists of the Center for Public Communications of the Southern Federal University told about popular scientific special projects in the media, the transformation of modern journalism, the features of communication with the press services of universities, the use of neural networks and much more.

The festival guests also attended thematic scientific and technical lectures on law, sociology, hydrogen energy, business tourism, thinking, art and public speaking. The participants of the business program events were told about modern developments in physics, instrumentation, machine learning and economics, as well as how these branches of science today work with such rapidly gaining popularity technologies as neural networks and artificial intelligence.