USA Science and Engineering Festival was a science festival

Science festival

A science festival is a public event featuring a variety of science- and technology-related activities—from lectures, exhibitions, workshops, live demonstrations of experiments, guided tours and panel discussions to cultural events such as theater plays, readings and musical productions, all with...

 in Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

 that founder Larry Book deemed the country’s first national science festival. The inaugural event was held from October 10, 2010 through October 24, 2010 and was planned to be a yearly event. The two week festival culminated with a two-day Expo on the National Mall

National Mall

The National Mall is an open-area national park in downtown Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. The National Mall is a unit of the National Park Service , and is administered by the National Mall and Memorial Parks unit...

 that gave over 550 U.S. science & engineering organizations the opportunity to present interactive hands-on, science activities with the goal of engaging the general public and generating scientific excitement and awareness. Over 550 organizations partnered with the inaugural USA Science & Engineering Festival including 125 universities/research institutes, 125 professional science societies, 50 government agencies, 30 high tech and life science companies and 150 informal science outreach organizations

These included the National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Sciences, AAAS, American Physical Society, American Chemical Society, IEEE, American Woman in Sciences, Society of Hispanic Engineers, National Society of Black Engineers, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Georgetown. University of California San Diego, University of California, Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, U.S. Naval Academy, Duke, University of Maryland, J. Craig Venter Research Institute, Carnegie Institute of Sciences, NIH, NSF, NASA, Office of Naval Research, Department of Energy, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Fermi Accelerator Facility, Princeton Plasma Physics, Lockheed Martin, Agilent, Google, Baxter, ResMed, Hitachi, Smithsonian, American Museum of Natural History, US Botanic Gardens, Koshland Museum, FIRST, Girls Inc., Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts.

Nifty Fifty

The Nifty Fifty program was a group of fifty nominated professionals in various areas of science and engineering who interacted and spoke about their work and careers to middle and high school students across Washington DC in the fall of 2010. Speakers backgrounds were varied and span from Chemistry

Chemistry

Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....

, Biotechnology

Biotechnology

Biotechnology is a field of applied biology that involves the use of living organisms and bioprocesses in engineering, technology, medicine and other fields requiring bioproducts. Biotechnology also utilizes these products for manufacturing purpose...

, Engineering

Engineering

Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...

, Math, Computer Science

Computer science

Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...

, Medicine

Medicine

Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....

, Green Technology, Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology is the study of manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally, nanotechnology deals with developing materials, devices, or other structures possessing at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometres...

, Business

Business

A business is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and administered to earn profit to increase the wealth of their owners. Businesses may also be not-for-profit...

, Physics

Physics

Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...

, Astronomy

Astronomy

Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...

, and Energy.

Lunch With a Laureate

The Lunch with a Laureate program was focused on a small group of middle and high school students across the Greater Washington D.C., Northern Virginia and Maryland areas. The purpose of the program was to engage students in informal conversations with a Nobel Prize winning Scientist over a brown bag lunch. The twelve Laureates that participated in this program were: Leon M. Lederman

Leon M. Lederman

Leon Max Lederman is an American experimental physicist and Nobel Prize in Physics laureate for his work with neutrinos. He is Director Emeritus of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, USA...

, John C. Mather

John C. Mather

John Cromwell Mather is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist and Nobel Prize in Physics laureate for his work on the Cosmic Background Explorer Satellite with George Smoot. COBE was the first experiment to measure ".....

, William Daniel Phillips

William Daniel Phillips

William Daniel Phillips is an American physicist and shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1997 with Steven Chu and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji. He is of Italian and Welsh descent.-Biography:...

, Robert H. Grubbs

Robert H. Grubbs

Robert Howard Grubbs is an American chemist and Nobel laureate.As he noted in his official Nobel Prize autobiography, "In some places, my birthplace is listed as Calvert City and in others Possum Trot [NB: both in Marshall County]...

, Alan J. Heeger

Alan J. Heeger

Alan Jay Heeger is an American physicist, academic and Nobel Prize laureate in chemistry.Heeger was born in Sioux City, Iowa to a Jewish family. He earned a B.S. in physics and mathematics from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1957, and a Ph.D in physics from the University of California,...

, Dudley R. Herschbach

Dudley R. Herschbach

Dudley Robert Herschbach is an American chemist at Harvard University. He won the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry jointly with Yuan T. Lee and John C...

, Phillip A. Sharp, Kary B. Mullis, Kurt Wuthrich

Kurt Wüthrich

Kurt Wüthrich is a Swiss chemist and Nobel Chemistry laureate.-Biography:Born in Aarberg, Switzerland, Wüthrich was educated in chemistry, physics, and mathematics at the University of Berne before pursuing his Ph.D. under the direction of Silvio Fallab at the University of Basel, awarded in 1964...

, Douglas D. Osheroff

Douglas D. Osheroff

Douglas Dean Osheroff is an American physicist known for his work in experimental condensed matter physics, in particular for his co-discovery of superfluidity in Helium-3. For his contributions he shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics along with David Lee and Robert C...

, Baruch Samuel Blumberg

Baruch Samuel Blumberg

Baruch Samuel "Barry" Blumberg was an American doctor and co-recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine , and the President of the American Philosophical Society from 2005 until his death.Blumberg received the Nobel Prize for "discoveries concerning new mechanisms for the origin...

 and Sir Harry Kroto.

Expo

The two-week Festival ended with a two-day Expo on the National Mall

National Mall

The National Mall is an open-area national park in downtown Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. The National Mall is a unit of the National Park Service , and is administered by the National Mall and Memorial Parks unit...

 that featured over 500 U.S. science organizations. The list of exhibitors included universities, colleges, high school science clubs, student organizations, research institutes, informal science outreach organizations, community organizations, professional science & engineering societies, life science and high tech companies, and other types of science organizations. About 500,000 people reportedly attended the event.

The next Expo will take place in Washington, D.C. on April 27–29, 2012.

Satellite festivals

Satellite festivals were being planned in 2010 at a number of locations throughout the U.S., including: Arizona

Arizona

Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...

: Tucson

Tucson, Arizona

Tucson is a city in and the county seat of Pima County, Arizona, United States. The city is located 118 miles southeast of Phoenix and 60 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The 2010 United States Census puts the city's population at 520,116 with a metropolitan area population at 1,020,200...

; California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

: Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, Oakland

Oakland, California

Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...

, San Francisco, Santa Ana

Santa Ana, California

Santa Ana is the county seat and second most populous city in Orange County, California, and with a population of 324,528 at the 2010 census, Santa Ana is the 57th-most populous city in the United States....

; Florida

Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

: Gainesville

Gainesville, Florida

Gainesville is the largest city in, and the county seat of, Alachua County, Florida, United States as well as the principal city of the Gainesville, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area . The preliminary 2010 Census population count for Gainesville is 124,354. Gainesville is home to the sixth...

, Jacksonville

Jacksonville, Florida

Jacksonville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Florida in terms of both population and land area, and the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. It is the county seat of Duval County, with which the city government consolidated in 1968...

, Ruskin

Ruskin, Florida

Ruskin is an unincorporated census-designated place in Hillsborough County, Florida, United States. The population was 17,208 at the 2010 census.-Geography:Ruskin is located at ....

, West Palm Beach

West Palm Beach, Florida

West Palm Beach, is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and is the most populous city in and county seat of Palm Beach County, the third most populous county in Florida with a 2010 population of 1,320,134. The city is also the oldest incorporated municipality in South Florida...

; Idaho

Idaho

Idaho is a state in the Rocky Mountain area of the United States. The state's largest city and capital is Boise. Residents are called "Idahoans". Idaho was admitted to the Union on July 3, 1890, as the 43rd state....

: Pocatello

Pocatello, Idaho

Pocatello is the county seat and largest city of Bannock County, with a small portion on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation in neighboring Power County, in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Idaho. It is the principal city of the Pocatello metropolitan area, which encompasses all of Bannock...

; Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

: Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, DeKalb

DeKalb, Illinois

DeKalb is a city in DeKalb County, Illinois, United States. The population was 43,862 at the 2010 census, up from 39,018 at the 2000 census. The city is named after decorated German war hero Johann De Kalb, who died during the American Revolutionary War....

; Maryland

Maryland

Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...

: Middle River

Middle River, Maryland

Middle River is an unincorporated community and a census-designated place in Baltimore County, Maryland, United States. The population was 23,958 at the 2000 census...

, Rockville

Rockville, Maryland

Rockville is the county seat of Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. It is a major incorporated city in the central part of Montgomery County and forms part of the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area. The 2010 U.S...

; New Jersey

New Jersey

New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

: Clifton

Clifton, New Jersey

Clifton is a city in Passaic County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city had a total population of 84,136. The 2010 population represented an increase of 5,464 residents from its population of 78,672 in the 2000 Census, making it the state's 11th largest...

; New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

: New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, Rochester

Rochester, New York

Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...

; North Carolina

North Carolina

North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...

: Chapel Hill

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Chapel Hill is a town in Orange County, North Carolina, United States and the home of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and UNC Health Care...

 (North Carolina Science Festival

North Carolina Science Festival

The North Carolina Science Festival is a multi-week event encompassing hundreds of science education and outreach events throughout the state of North Carolina. The festival is organized by Morehead Planetarium and Science Center in Chapel Hill, N.C., and highlights the educational, cultural and...

); Ohio

Ohio

Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...

: Cleveland

Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...

, Columbus

Columbus, Ohio

Columbus is the capital of and the largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio. The broader metropolitan area encompasses several counties and is the third largest in Ohio behind those of Cleveland and Cincinnati. Columbus is the third largest city in the American Midwest, and the fifteenth largest city...

; Texas

Texas

Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

: Austin

Austin, Texas

Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...

, Dallas, San Antonio; Virginia

Virginia

The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...

: Fairfax

Fairfax, Virginia

The City of Fairfax is an independent city forming an enclave within the confines of Fairfax County, in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. Although politically independent of the surrounding county, the City is nevertheless the county seat....

, Falls Church

Falls Church, Virginia

The City of Falls Church is an independent city in Virginia, United States, in the Washington Metropolitan Area. The city population was 12,332 in 2010, up from 10,377 in 2000. Taking its name from The Falls Church, an 18th-century Anglican parish, Falls Church gained township status within...

, Hampton

Hampton, Virginia

Hampton is an independent city that is not part of any county in Southeast Virginia. Its population is 137,436. As one of the seven major cities that compose the Hampton Roads metropolitan area, it is on the southeastern end of the Virginia Peninsula. Located on the Hampton Roads Beltway, it hosts...

, Reston

Reston, Virginia

Reston is a census-designated place in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States, within the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. The population was 58,404, at the 2010 Census and 56,407 at the 2000 census...

; Washington: Vancouver

Vancouver, Washington

Vancouver is a city on the north bank of the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Washington. Incorporated in 1857, it is the fourth largest city in the state with a 2010 census population of 161,791 as of April 1, 2010...

 (Pacific Northwest Science & Engineering Festival).

Government Support

The Festival had a bipartisan Honorary Congressional Host Committee of over 100 members. House Resolution 1660 and Senate Resolution 656 were unanimously approved in support of the goals of the USA Science & Engineering Festival.

The White House scheduled their Inaugural White House Science Fair to coincide with the Inaugural USA Science & Engineering Festival. President Obama referenced the importance of this Festival in his keynote address at the White House Science Fair.

President Obama created a dedicated Public Service Announcement inviting the general public to the USA Science & Engineering Festival.

Over 50 major government officials attended or participated directly in the USA Science and Engineering Festival including: Chief Science Advisor John Holdren, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, Head of R&D for Department of Defense Zachary Lemnios, Head of R&D for Office of Navel Research Michael Kassner talks about ONR's involvement with the USA Science and Engineering Festival, Head of R&D for the National Park Service Gary Machlis was involved with the Festival's Nifty Fifty program, Head of R&D for EPA Paul Anastas was involved with both the Nifty Fifty program and the kick off of the festival, Dr. William Brinkman of the Department of Energy and NIH Director Francis Collins was a Nifty Fifty speaker as well as he performed his own songs at the Festival's Expo.

Science Celebrities Support for the Festival

Many science celebrities participated in the inaugural USA Science & Engineering Festival including Bill Nye the Science Guy, Jamie Hyneman, Adam Savage

Adam Savage

Adam Whitney Savage is an American industrial design and special effects designer/fabricator, actor, educator, and co-host of the Discovery Channel television series MythBusters. His model work has appeared in major films, including Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones and The Matrix...

and Kari Byron from the Mythbusters, Sid the Science Kid, cast members of NCIS and Erno Rubik.