San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
TECH FIRMS INSPIRE LOCAL TALENT AT SCIENCE FESTIVAL
Expo at Petco Park featured games, music and learning
Science and technology companies packed Petco Park in downtown San Diego on Saturday for the 15th annual Festival of Science & Engineering — featuring everything from robotic submarines to the latest self-driving car technology to animals and games for small children.
There was even rapping math teachers.
“If you did your homework, then say, ‘I did my homework,’” duo Math Notes chanted over hip hop beats.
“I did my homework,” called back a crowd of head-nodding parents, as children solved mysteries using Dna-themed clues, gazed at reptiles and built rubber band-propelled paper airplanes.
“My daughter likes science, so we decided to go,” said Sarah Stuckenschneider of Sierra Mesa. “She’s making slime right now. She thinks that’s cool.”
This year marked the first time the festival was held at the baseball field since right before the pandemic lockdown in 2020. The free event was conducted virtually in 2021 and was dispersed into smaller community events last year.
Organizers estimated this year’s expo day drew about 20,000 people and more than 100 vendors, including corporate sponsors such as Illumina and Qualcomm, as well as schools and nonprofits.
The idea is to get kids excited about careers in engineering, bioscience and other related fields, said Sara Pagano, managing director of the nonprofit Generation
STEAM, which puts on education events throughout the year but none bigger than the science and engineering fair at Petco Park.
“We say, if you’re growing up here, and you want to stay here, you can,” she said. “There’s school here. There’s research institutes. There’s amazing companies that are based here doing work on a global scale.”
Charles Bergan, vice president of engineering at Qualcomm, said the event helps attract local talent. He said engineering is an industry always in need of new recruits.
“A lot of people think, I’m going to be lawyer or a doctor or a finance guy, but they don’t think of engineering in that class,” he said. “But then I tell them that an engineer with a bachelor’s degree starts at close to six figures right out of college, and you’re at $200,000 to $300,000 toward the middle of your career.
“We have people who remember going (to the event), were impressed and now they’re working at Qualcomm,” he added.
Amy Sullivan of Mission Hills attended the event with her husband and their 3-year old twins, who were launching balls using rubber band catapults.
“My kids do STEM at their preschool,” said Sullivan, “so I thought it would be fun for them to come and try different experiments. They’re very active boys.”
Nearby, a man in steam punk-styled goggles and a hat that read “Dr. Boom” was launching aluminum cans into the air with 5,000 volt blasts of electricity. At another booth, children built DNA strands out of gummy bears and Twizzlers.
Amanda Plante, founder of Zorvargo, a nonprofit that does animal education programs in schools, introduced visitors to a Flemish giant rabbit named Red.
“We have the furry, the feathered, the creepy crawly,” she said. “We have something for everybody to inspire them to help make the world a better place.”
Raina Shapur, a sophomore at Westview High School in the Torrey Highlands community, was volunteering at a booth for Team Inspiration, a competitive robotics program she does on the weekends.
The 16-year-old said she got excited about the group after building a robot with her father about five years ago. Now she’s thinking about a job in engineering.
“That is my aspiration,” she said, “but we’ll see where the road takes me.”