Wow. What a weekend. We don’t have the official numbers yet, but it sure felt like the organizers met their projections of 200,000 plus attendees at the USA Science and Engineering Festival. Exhibitors offering the kids the chance to see or participate in hands-on science filled two entire floors of the Washington convention center. And the kids and parents jammed both floors—as you can see from the photo above—for the bulk of nine hours both days.

Exhibitors ran the gamut from government agencies and universities to science trade associations and industry. Caterpillar brought small bulldozers and forklifts that were predictably popular with the junior Y chromosome set. But we had a constant flow of kids of all ages, genders and ethnicities at our booth learning where stem cells come from and how to create scaffolds to hold stem cells to grow knee cartilage or ears. The latter had sufficient ick factor to be very popular with the pre-teens.

What was more exciting for my CIRM colleagues and I at the booth was the engagement of the parents. They like the chance to understand a bit more about “those stem cells we keep hearing about,” and to hear about some of the progress we are making toward therapies.

CIRM joined the International Society for Stem Cell Research and the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine in organizing and staffing the event. Together, these three organizations are probably the largest players in the field and while we often work together with one of the organizations or the other, this was the first time all three of us came together on a project. That, too, made the day feel special.

Then, this morning our communication and education committee for the Alliance met as part of the group’s annual D.C. board meeting. All agreed that the event was a great success and that we would come together to do more programs like this.

Don Gibbons