Science festival
carlyo | October 8, 2013
The Northrop Grumman Foundation returns as a major Festival Sponsor, and will be significantly enhancing the Festival's focus on STEM through impressive activities at the Expo -- including exciting new competitions in cyber defense and robotics!
"The Northrop Grumman Foundation is committed to helping advance STEM education and sparking interest in young people," says Sandra Evers-Manly, vice president of Global Corporate Responsibility and president of the Northrop Grumman Foundation. "Our mission is to fund educational projects that make a difference in the lives of our country's students…
carlyo | August 2, 2013X-STEM - presented by Northrop Grumman Foundation and MedImmune - is an Extreme STEM symposium for elementary through high school students featuring interactive presentations by an exclusive group of visionaries who aim to empower and inspire kids about careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). These top STEM role models and industry leaders are sure to ignite your students’ curiosity through storytelling and live demonstrations.
Our spotlight on our X-STEM Speakers begins with Geneticist, Physician and Director of the NIH, Dr. Francis Collins.
Raised on a small…
carlyo | August 1, 2013Ronald Mickens -- Research Physicist and Mathematician
Ronald Mickens is a leading authority on oscillations (repetitive, vibrating motions that occur in cycles), and in developing mathematical models for predicting the spread of disease. He has been recognized as an expert on the history of African Americans in science and mathematics.
Although he is now a respected researcher and educator, Ronald Mickens can remember as a child being constantly in trouble at home because of his curious, active mind for dangerous scientific experiments. This includes conducting experiments with caustic…
carlyo | March 27, 2013Celebrating Women's History Month with another STEM Role Model! In today’s blog we feature Nanomaterials Physicist Dr. Diandra Leslie-Pelecky.
We are excited to announce that Dr. Leslie-Pelecky will be serving as a Nifty Fifty Speaker for the Festival!
She has appeared on television for ESPN, H2 and VOOM channels, and in print for publications such as TIME and Sporting News magazines, and professional society publications such as C&EN and the Materials Research Society Bulletin. She appears periodically on the SiriusXM Speedway satellite radio program where she uses science to dispel…
carlyo | March 21, 2013The USA Science & Engineering Festival is thrilled to introduce our elite group of X-STEM and Nifty Fifty Speakers for the 3rd Festival! In today's blog we feature Physicist and former NASA Astronaut Dr. Kathryn Thornton!
We are excited to announce that Dr. Kathryn Thornton will serve as both an X-STEM and Nifty Fifty Speaker for the Festival! Selected in 1984 by NASA as an astronaut candidate, Kathryn Thornton would go on to serve 12 notable years with NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston -- a career which would see her become the second American woman to walk in space, in addition to…
carlyo | March 12, 2013By USA Science & Engineering Festival Founder Larry Bock
"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." - Carl Sagan
The excitement, the rigors and the risk of scientific discovery: Sagan loved and shared these emotions more effectively and openly with us than perhaps any other contemporary scientist. And in the process he helped catapult "science outreach" into the public lexicon.
Today more than ever, if we are to inspire the next generation of innovators and better inform the public about science, we, with Sagan-like boldness, need to rethink science outreach, especially…
carlyo | February 12, 2013TONIGHT- special guests of the First Lady at the State of the Union include USA Science & Engineering Festival X-STEM speaker Bobak Ferdowsi and Nifty Fifty Speaker Jack Andraka!
Bobak Ferdowsi- referred to as NASA's "Mohawk Guy" is a flight director at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In addition to his inspiring day-to-day work on the Mars Curiosity mission, he volunteers as a FIRST robotics mentor to get more boys and girls excited about STEM education. We are thrilled for Bobak to participate in our Extreme STEM Symposium! Read his full biography here.
Jack Andraka- 15 Year-Old…
jhalper | October 8, 2011Five articles (plus some photos from the recent Researchers' Night activities) are now online in the fall issue of Interface magazine (the Weizmann Institute's "friendly" science magazine).
â¢Read about a new kind of water treatment system - one that breaks down such complex, man-made chemicals in water as cleaning fluids, flame retardants and pesticide residues, turning them into simpler compounds that can then degrade naturally into harmless substances. Today, there is little that can be done about these pollutants, which are considered dangerous even in tiny amounts when they get into the…
jhalper | July 29, 2011One Thursday evening near the end of July, people sitting outside a local ice cream parlor watched a neurobiology Ph.D. student wave his hand in front of his face in imitation of a robot learning to sense itself as separate from its surroundings. Despite the trains arriving at the station in the background and the microphone feedback from a rival talk at an outdoor coffee shop across the plaza, the audience was engrossed in hearing how this simple robot, mostly built of Lego and a camera, is able to explore its environment in the same way a baby does.
All across the city of Rehovot,…
jhalper | September 12, 2010The Jewish holiday season is upon us, and that means lots of days off and not many new science articles. In fact, we have a stockpile of science stories waiting for our new website, but glitches and the need for a Hebrew site have been holding things up. In the meantime, here is a video from the Animix international comics, animation and caricature festival held in August in Tel Aviv, which featured Nano Comics workshops for kids with scientists and various Israeli comics illustrators.
The Nano Comics, themselves, will appear on the new website, should it ever go live.
Coming up, at the end…