CAIRO: The American University in Cairo's (AUC) School of Sciences and Engineering Outreach Program will be organizing its third annual Cairo Science Festival. The festival hosts a multitude of events and is considered to be Egypt's largest celebration of science, innovation and technology. With the themes of nurturing a knowledge and innovation culture and promoting lifelong learning, the festival will be held from April 21 to May 12 in collaboration with the Cambridge Science Festival. The festival serves as a platform for participants to explore science and to challenge student creativity in offering unconventional scientific solutions to global issues. The festival will feature renowned speakers and will showcase leading local research groups. It will also engage students and members of the general public through various collaborative activities. “The festival empowers and inspires people to become better citizens, capable of creating a better future for themselves, their country and their planet,” said Alaa Ibrahim, assistant professor of space astrophysics and chair of the University's Outreach Committee. “This is what universities are all about. They can achieve this through formal teaching and research to a certain extent, but science festivals and other forms of informal community-engagement activities enhance and enrich this role and allow universities to reach the various segments of society. The average person spends less than 9 percent of his or her lifetime in formal education.” The festival's opening talk will be delivered by Mostafa El-Sayed, nanotechnology expert and the Julius Brown Chair and Regents Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who will be discussing lessons and milestones from his career in science. Bruce Alberts, former president of the National Academy of Sciences and US presidential envoy to Muslim-majority countries, will also be delivering a lecture on how science impacts society. Other topics covered during the festival include science and technology entrepreneurship, the culture of intellectual property, women in science and innovation, science and citizenship, a science Olympiad, science communication and public engagement, as well as Cairo as a city of science and innovation. The festival will also be hosting AUC's seventh annual Excellence in Undergraduate Research, Entrepreneurship and Creative Achievement conference under the theme of “Choosing the Present, Charting the Future.” Most notably, the festival targets the younger generation through a number of shows and exhibitions that seek to trigger interest in science among Egypt's youth. These include puppet and Nutty Scientists shows, as well as various exhibitions on leading a healthy lifestyle and discovering sciences and engineering. The festival will also introduce the Science Bus, a mobile science museum that will be touring malls and youth centers across Cairo with the aim of nurturing a love of science among Egypt's adolescents. In addition, this year's festival will witness the launch of Science Weekend, which gives school and university students the opportunity to experience the life of scientists through a host of activities conducted while staying on campus for the weekend. “Like science itself, the festival is continuously growing and developing,” said Ibrahim. “This year, the festival is reaching new places and audiences, slipping science in the mainstream. I call this outreach 2.0 because we go to people in such casual environments, adding new roles and values to these venues.” The festival's main areas of focus this year involve sustainability and green concepts. Aside from exhibitions and panel discussions, the Imagine the Future competition seeks to bring forth youth-inspired engagement on critical issues of global sustainability. Students and youth are invited to develop compelling depictions of a global issue of their interest and suggest solutions developed through research and discussion. The project will be presented in a Web-based format, which documents their questions, discussions, discoveries and solutions, making their findings accessible to youth and communities worldwide. The festival's closing speech will be delivered by Nadia Zakhary, minister of scientific research, and Hussein Khaled, minister of higher education. An award ceremony will follow, whereby distinguished student projects will be awarded. For more information and the festival's schedule, visit the Cairo Science Festival Web site.
