Chicago Science: City to host world's longest science festival

Chicago's leading scientific, academic, corporate and nonprofit institutions will launch the world's first year-long science festival for city and suburban residents.

The celebration, announced Tuesday during a press conference at Millenium Park, is called "Science Chicago: Life's a Lab." The event is a collaboration of more than 100 partners spearheaded by the Museum of Science and Industry. Science Chicago will use programming to engage and educate the next generation of scientists in what Rabiah Mayas, Ph.D., science director of Science Chicago, calls a "broad initiative" with "a really big team."

"Our partners include museums in the Chicago area, industry organizations, research universities and community groups," Mayas said. "All of them are coming together for the year to put on programming for the city, all with the common goal of exciting the region about the technology, the engineering, the developments and advancements that are right here in Chicago."

Among the groups involved are the Chicago Community Trust and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Though the official announcement of the city-wide science fair came today, Executive Director of Science Chicago, Cheryl Hughes, said the program has been in the works for a couple of years. The MacArthur foundation approached the Museum of Science and Industry with the idea of bringing Chicago-area institutions together to focus on science.

"Chicago has a history of coming together to work on initiatives and certainly having the leadership of the MacArthur Foundation and the Chicago Community Trust encouraged organizations to want to come together," Hughes said.

While the official launch of Science Chicago is scheduled for mid-September, a beta version of sciencechicago.com also launched Tuesday. It features some online components of programs that will continue once the full-scale site launches at the end of August and throughout the year. Among its current features are home science challenges for kids and a blog called "Dr. Rabiah Talks Science," where Mayas and Science Chicago partners can talk to Chicago youth about science, engineering and technology topics that interest them.

"We'll invite kids to write posts from time to time, and they'll be able to comment on posts that we moderate so kids can see what other kids are doing," Mayas said.

Though the program is for the entire city, there is an emphasis on engaging youth in science. Science Chicago worked closely with Chicago Public Schools when developing a lot of their programs, according to Mayas. And Millennium Park was filled with kids from various science programs demonstrating their skills, from Rolling Meadows High School students who showcased a robot they built that can play catch autonomously, to a couple of student Museum of Science and Industry interns from the Illinois Institute of Technology who held a messy demonstration on the physical properties of water and corn starch.

Steven Willis, coordinator of the Science Achievers program at the Museum of Science and Industry said, "I think [Science Chicago] is going to be a great opportunity to really showcase what teens all over the city are doing and what people are doing to advance us in science."

Hughes said Chicago rightfully calls itself a "science city."

"Chicago has a history of being a technological leader. We've got two major labs here in the University of Illinois at Chicago and Northwestern University which have amazing research facilities," Hughes said.

And Science Chicago programs like "Science Saturdays" will allow people to get behind-the-scenes tours of these institutions. The University of Illinois at Chicago is allowing the public to come and tour its surgical robotics suite for the first time through Science Chicago.

"Chicagoans who normally aren't allowed to see it are actually going to get to go into a surgical suite, see the robots that help surgeons perform microsurgery and talk to the world-class doctors that actually use that equipment to do surgery," Mayas said.

But beyond the showy experiments and impressive displays of technological advancement Hughes said the goal is to get everyone to see that science is all around them.

"You know that science isn't just the guy in the lab coat in the lab," Mayas said. "It's the engineer behind the CTA, and it's the software designer who comes up with the games we play on our Nintendo and all of that mysterious science that maybe not everyone knows about."