Carnegie partners with USA Science & Engineering Festival for second year

The world's largest celebration of science and engineering, the USA Science & Engineering Festival, will return to Washington, D.C., April 28-29, 2012. For the second year, the Carnegie Institution for Science will participate with hands-on experiments. At Carnegie's booth last year, visitors prospected for microscopic diamonds, saw a real diamond produced by our high pressure lab, touched the universe through handling a meteorite, constructed a spectroscope to use at home, examined fossils that are more than a billion years old, and met the very scientists who work with these amazing items.

The USA Science & Engineering Festival, hosted by Lockheed Martin, aims to inspire the next generation of engineers, scientists and technologists, and to increase public awareness of the importance of science and math education. The highly successful inaugural festival, the Nation's first and only national science festival, included nearly one million participants in the month-long celebration. The culmination was a two-day expo on the National Mall in October 2010, which included over 2,000 hands-on activities and 100 live performances, made possible by more than 500 scientific organizations.

Among the science superstars are Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, hosts of the Discovery Channel's hit TV series MythBusters, and Bill Nye the Science Guy. The 2012 Festival will include a new book fair and career pavilion.

"Carnegie scientists often are far away exploring or spending many hours in the lab building new tools or making amazing discoveries," Carnegie organizer Toby Horn remarked. "This is a great opportunity for the public to meet a real scientist and share in the wonder."

"The 2012 USA Science & Engineering Festival is already shaping up to be much larger than our inaugural event," said high-tech entrepreneur Larry Bock, executive director and festival co-creator. "With nearly eight months before our finale event, we already have more sponsors, partners, performers and exhibitors than we did for our first event. We look forward to bringing even more passion and excitement for the sciences and engineering to children and families across the nation and around the world."

The 2012 USA Science & Engineering Festival will include:

Expo Book Fair: The newly created science and engineering-related book fair will focus on authors with significant works in the science and engineering fields geared toward a K-12 level of scientific understanding.

STEM Career Pavilion: Students and adults will have the opportunity to explore tomorrow's hot careers in areas such as renewable energy, robotics, space tourism, nanotechnology, virtual reality, clean technology, genetics, education, and many other exciting fields.

Science Celebrities: Leading science celebrities like Bill Nye the Science Guy and Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage of the MythBusters will appear live during the finale Expo. Also scheduled to appear are Jeff Lieberman from Discovery Channel's series Time Warp and Apollo Robbins, the Gentleman Thief from National Geographic's Brain Games. Science entrepreneurs will participate, including: Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal, SpaceX and Tesla; renowned video game developer and space tourist Richard Garriott and Kevin Kinsella, founder of more than 60 scientific companies and a Tony Award Winner. These entrepreneurs are sure to inspire today's youth regarding the many opportunities that exist in science careers.

Expanded Expo and Events: Several special events are scheduled for the 2012 Festival, including: The World's Largest Science Cheer; Science for Citizens; and Discover Magazine; a Star Gazing Party hosted by Celestron; Ellipse Day with Museum of Mathematics (MoMath); the Kavli Foundation Science Video Contest; the Grand Challenges 60 Second Pitch Contest by Engineering.com;and many nationwide contests and satellite events.

Sneak Peek Friday: Friday, April 27, 2012 will be an invitation-only sneak peek for students and teachers from area and underserved schools, home school groups, military families, government officials and media. April 28-29, 2012 will be open to the public.

Nifty Fifty Program: In the days leading up to the Festival finale event, the USA Science & Engineering Festival will connect middle and high school students in the greater Washington, DC area with more than 125 of the nation's most dynamic and influential scientists and engineers through its Nifty Fifty program, sponsored by AT&T.

Lunch with a Laureate: The "Lunch with a Laureate" program is a rare opportunity for a small group of middle and high school students to engage in informal conversations with 15 Nobel Prize winning scientists during a brown bag lunch.

Provided by Carnegie Institution