SDB at the USA Science and Engineering Festival
Posted by Marsha Lucas, on 18 November 2010
The Society for Developmental Biology participated in the first USA Science and Engineering Festival held October 10-24, 2010 in Washington, DC. SDB sponsored four separate events throughout the festival in an effort to share the field of developmental biology with the community. This included a teacher workshop based on the BioEYES K-12 science education program, Nifty Fifty speaker Marnie Halpern who spoke at a Maryland high school, a public lecture featuring Nobel laureates Eric Wieschaus and Martin Chalfie with Alexandra Joyner and Mary Dickinson at the Carnegie Institution, and a 2-day Expo on the National Mall in Washington, DC.
Visitors to the SDB expo booth were able to observe live developing frog and zebrafish embryos, color masks of their favorite model organisms, and participate in the Evolution Thought Trail exercise on the homology of the vertebrate forelimb. There was an overwhelming excitement from students, parents, teachers, and scientists to participate in future science festivals.
Marsha thank you for your post. Those captivated young faces alone show why this was such a worthwhile thing for the SDB to have done. Hopefully this new science festival will be the first of many.
I agree Jane! It was so much fun and the feedback we got from the visitors was phenomenal. People were happy to see science being celebrated. We had nearly 50 volunteers at our booth over the 2-day expo who helped make it a success.