Nifty Fifty

This Nifty Fifty Podcast features, Dr. Loren Anderson, physicist from West Virginia University,  speaking to Tuscarora High School about the Milky Way Galaxy, astronomy, massive stars, and his career path to becoming a physics professor. Read the full blog here.

This Nifty Fifty Podcast features, Dr. Tristan Hübsch, Physicist and Mathematician from Howard University,  speaking to Immanuel Christian School about the “Theory of Everything” and how he got interested in Physics from a very early age. Read the full blog here.

This Nifty Fifty Podcast features Dr. Matthew Hartings speaking to Holy Cross School in Garret Park, Maryland.  Dr. Hartings the professor behind "The Chemistry of Cooking," a wildely popular course at American University, where Dr. Hartings is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry.  Read full blog here.   

This Nifty Fifty Podcast features Dr. Len Annetta speaking about how his background growing up poor and how he’s now creating the next generation of creative science and technology leaders through serious games.  Dr. Annetta is speaking to Center City Public Charter School in Washington, D.C.  Read full blog here.   

This Nifty Fifty Podcast features Dr. Frederic Bertley speaking to high school children about the availability of STEM jobs, how much science affects our lives, the promising future of transportation, drinking water, medicine, and genomic science, and some of the living scientists making an impact on our work.   Listen to the podcast and read the full blog here.

Why is InfoComm International, the leading trade association for the audiovisual technology industry, returning this year as the sponsor of the Festival's prominent Nifty Fifty school visit program? The primary reason, says InfoComm executive Betsy Jaffe, is Nifty Fifty's powerful potential to transform students' attitude and performance in STEM. Which is why, she reports, InfoComm's involvement will be even more exciting and student-focused in 2015! Read full blog here.

This is the inaugural USA Science & Engineering Festival Podcast, featuring Jordan Green, Ph.D.speaking to students at South River High School in Edgewater, MD. Dr. Green talks about his work creating innovative technologies and therapeutics that can directly benefit human health.   Read full blog and listen to the podcast by clicking here.

By Nifty Fifty Host Carol Bengle Gilbert Very often, even the host can't helped but be inspired by the Nifty Fifty talks. Monday, I listened to Dr. Ellen Stofan, NASA's chief scientist, address middle school students at the Nysmith School for the Gifted in Herndon, Virginia. The school decided to announce the science fair winners in conjunction with our event. (The kids in front of our sign in the photo are a few of the many winners.) This was a fun touch! Her talk brought out many interesting aspects of the work NASA does, but it was a student comment that really got me thinking. Dr. Stofan…

By USA Science & Engineering Festival Nifty Fifty and X-STEM Speaker Dr. Jeff Goldstein Note: The launch of the CRS-5 is set for 6:20 am ET, January 6, on SpaceX-5 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, adjacent to Kennedy Space Center, Florida. I thought it would be important to put up a blog post on the October 28, 2014, loss of Orb-3 and the SSEP Mission 6 Yankee Clipper payload of experiments, something that could capture the experience in that moment. I think it is an important story to share with the thousands of SSEP students across the nation and in Canada who are invested in…

The ‘Nifty Fifty (times 4)’, a program of Science Spark, presented by InfoComm International, are a group of 200 noted science and engineering professionals who will fan out across the Washington, D.C. area in the 2014-2015 school year to speak about their work and careers at various middle and high schools. Meet Nifty Fifty Speaker Dr. Erica Ellingson Her research is key to shedding further light on how the cosmos began and its future development. "My work focuses mostly on topics concerning the evolution of galaxies and quasars, and observational cosmology-- the origin, contents and…

By USA Science & Engineering Festival Nifty Fifty Speaker Jeff Potter Jeff Potter's Patent-Violating* Chocolate Chip Cookies. Photo by Jeff Potter One of the biggest advantages that home-cooked foods have over store-bought goods is time. Commercial products have to be shelf-stable, so manufacturers have to come up with clever tricks to mimic home cooking. What if we dug into the literature and tried using those tricks for ourselves? A freshly baked cookie—“just like Mom used to make!”—ends up being crispy on the outside and chewy in the middle. Some enterprising researchers at UC…

The ‘Nifty Fifty (times 4)’, a program of Science Spark, presented by InfoComm International, are a group of 200 noted science and engineering professionals who will fan out across the Washington, D.C. area in the 2014-2015 school year to speak about their work and careers at various middle and high schools. Meet Nifty Fifty Speaker Dr. Jennifer Elisseef Each year in medicine the low availability of donor tissue and organs for transplantation grows even more acute, but scientists -- working in an emerging, high-tech frontier called tissue engineering -- are helping to address the crisis by…

The ‘Nifty Fifty (times 4)’, a program of Science Spark, presented by InfoComm International, are a group of 200 noted science and engineering professionals who will fan out across the Washington, D.C. area in the 2014-2015 school year to speak about their work and careers at various middle and high schools. Meet Nifty Fifty Speaker Dr. Jordan Green  As a researcher, Jordan Green, Ph.D. is on the front lines of creating innovative technologies and therapeutics that can directly benefit human health. Specifically, this involves employing techniques in cellular engineering and nanobiotechnology…

The ‘Nifty Fifty (times 4)’, a program of Science Spark, presented by InfoComm International, are a group of 200 noted science and engineering professionals who will fan out across the Washington, D.C. area in the 2014-2015 school year to speak about their work and careers at various middle and high schools. Meet Nifty Fifty Speaker Dr. Tim Chartier As a mathematician and researcher par excellence specializing in numerical linear algebra, Tim Chartier, Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Davidson College, is known for pushing the boundaries of…

The ‘Nifty Fifty (times 4)’, a program of Science Spark, presented by InfoComm International, are a group of 200 noted science and engineering professionals who will fan out across the Washington, D.C. area in the 2014-2015 school year to speak about their work and careers at various middle and high schools. Meet Nifty Fifty Speaker Karen Elkins Vaccines against diseases such as measles, polio, and whooping cough have greatly reduced deaths and suffering. These vaccines are designed to mimic the microbes that cause the disease. When given a vaccine, the body's immune system is inspired to…

The ‘Nifty Fifty (times 4)’, a program of Science Spark, presented by InfoComm International, are a group of 200 noted science and engineering professionals who will fan out across the Washington, D.C. area in the 2014-2015 school year to speak about their work and careers at various middle and high schools. Meet Nifty Fifty Speaker Dr. Briana Pobiner  What does it mean to be human? Like other scientists in the field of anthropology, Briana Pobiner, a paleoanthropologist and science educator at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, uses this question as an important framework as…

Teachers in the D.C. Metropolitan area- we are now accepting applications for the Nifty Fifty (x4) Program! Click here to apply NOW to host a speaker at your school during the 2014/2015 school year. Nifty Fifty talks will take place during the months of February, March and April of 2015. The deadline to apply is Friday, November 21, 2014. Submit your application by following this link and select your top speaker choices. Speakers are available for middle and high schools in Washington D.C. and surrounding areas. Some of the new speakers joining our program include: Deborah Bass, Ph.D. - The…

The ‘Nifty Fifty (times 4)’, a program of Science Spark, presented by InfoComm International, are a group of 200 noted science and engineering professionals who will fan out across the Washington, D.C. area in the 2014-2015 school year to speak about their work and careers at various middle and high schools. Meet Nifty Fifty Speaker Dr. Alberto Gutierrez Welcome to the age of Personalized Medicine -- an emerging era of medical science which involves the development of drugs and other treatments that are tailored specifically to an individual patient, or a group, with certain genetic…

The ‘Nifty Fifty (times 4)’, a program of Science Spark, presented by InfoComm International, are a group of 200 noted science and engineering professionals who will fan out across the Washington, D.C. area in the 2014-2015 school year to speak about their work and careers at various middle and high schools. Meet Nifty Fifty Speaker Nick Schneider When NASA's newest robotic explorer, MAVEN, was launched in the Fall of 2013 and rocketed toward Mars on an historic quest to unravel the ancient mystery of the red planet's upper atmosphere, it carried sophisticated technology designed and built by…

The ‘Nifty Fifty (times 4)’, a program of Science Spark, presented by InfoComm International, are a group of 200 noted science and engineering professionals who will fan out across the Washington, D.C. area in the 2014-2015 school year to speak about their work and careers at various middle and high schools. Meet Nifty Fifty Speaker Dr. Dacher Keltner What are the origins our emotions, such as love, happiness, compassion and empathy -- feelings which help define us as humans? Welcome to the research world of social psychologist Dacher Keltner where he is exploring the biological and…