This past weekend we had the wonderful opportunity to host a booth at the 2016 USA Science and Engineering Festival. This was our second time participating in this huge biannual event — with over 1,000 STEM organizations — and we all had a great time. We estimate that we engaged in one-on-one contact with at least 1,500 – 2,000 visitors of all ages at our Environmental Nanotechnology booth! In total, the festival probably had over 300,000 visitors.
In our booth, we used hands-on activities to demonstrate some concepts of nanoscience and to show that nanotechnology is used in our everyday lives. The booth was a collaboration between four different Environmental Nanotechnology Organizations:
- VTSuN, the Virginia Tech Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology, of course.
- SNO, The Sustainable Nanotechnology Organization
- NanoEarth, a brand new center at Virginia Tech, part of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure
- CEINT, the Center for the Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology
See more photos from this even in this Facebook album.
Finally, we would like to say a huge thanks to our amazing volunteers, who dedicated hours at our booth talking to visitors and teaching them about nanotechnology:
- Hossein Abtahi, PhD student at Virginia Tech
- Temi Adegboye, Graduate Student at Howard University
- Taylor Bradley, Undergraduate Student at Howard University
- Deondre Glover, Undergraduate Student at Howard University
- Cara Herwig, Undergraduate Student at Virginia Tech
- Andrew Pfaff, Undergraduate Student at Virginia Tech
- Mohan Qin, PhD student at Virginia Tech
- Marina Vance, VTSuN associate director
- Haoran Wei, PhD student at Virginia Tech
About the Author: Dr. Marina Vance is the associate director for VTSuN: Virginia Tech’s Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology and a research scientist of the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science (ICTAS) at Virginia Tech. She is also the deputy director of NCE2NI: The Virginia Tech National Center for Earth and Environmental Nanotechnology Infrastructure.
Follow her on Twitter: @marinavance