The Atlanta Science Festival (ASF) made its widely anticipated return to the city with the Celebrate STEAM at Georgia Tech event last Saturday. ASF is a two-week public fair held across the Atlanta metro area, hosting events featuring various scientific concepts and interdisciplinary topics, all leading up to the grand finale — the Exploration Expo at Piedmont Park.
Tech was one of ASF’s original partners when it began a decade ago. This partnership has since stayed strong, with many professors and research faculty participating in many ASF events both on and off campus. The Technique spoke to Meisa Salaita, one of the festival’s co-directors, about this year’s festival.
Salaita was a chemist by trade for many years, with a Ph.D. in chemistry from Northwestern University. Her shift to educational outreach and business was a decision that allowed her to share her love of science to the world and young people. She aims to provide ways to make science more approachable and accessible to everyone who wants to learn more about the world around them.
This year’s festival has 100+ planned events. Even just the kickoff event featured various booths in a planetary-styled theme. Swarms of visitors, from families with toddlers to high-school students, filed through Kendeda, the Biotech Quad Courtyard, and surrounding buildings for hands-on craft activities, demos and speaker sessions.
In the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience, an optoelectronics activity captured the attention of many young kids by squishing blueberries.
“We’re trying to make solar cells out of blueberry juice. Blueberries contain molecules that allow them to take energy from the sun and convert it into electricity. It’s a very simplified version of the solar cells we have in our house to power a house. So we’re trying to also encourage students to engage in more environmentally friendly alternatives to electricity, ” said Amanda Conde Del Moral, MSE Ph.D.
Just downstairs, the Institute for Matter and Systems (IMS) put on a demonstration using a nanotechnology device. David Tavakoli, a senior research scientist at the IMS Materials Characterization Facility, recounted a favorite moment from the busy day.
“One of the best things was we put a butterfly wing underneath the microscope and just five kids just all went ‘COOOL’ at the same time. Now that was well worth the price of admission,” Tavakoli said.
Over at Kendeda, or “Earth” as it was labeled, the excitement was just as palpable. The Mappin’ the Ocean Floor booth had kids coloring squares to create a topographical map by mimicking sonar data.
“There’ve been a couple kids who are also really into oceanography and sea creatures, and they’ll tell me about their favorite creatures so we’ll gab about turtles and crabs and having that mutual interest is my favorite,” said Aren Russ, Atmospheric Sciences Ph.D.
With all the commotion of the kickoff event, it’s easy to forget the work put in behind the scenes to pull off multiple weeks of such activity. Salaita explained that while there are significant logistical challenges, developing long-term partnerships and getting sponsors were a big reason for their continued presence in Atlanta. Year after year, ASF has drawn crowds of thousands of residents and non-residents for this celebration of science and art. “The success of the festival speaks for itself,” Salaita said.
The IMS lab at Tech was one of the original participants of the inaugural festival over a decade ago.
“We love the outreach. I think for a lot of people, especially from the public, Georgia Tech looks very intimidating, you don’t really know what goes on behind those [lab doors] and we love to open everything up and let people see all of the things we can do and how we can advance society by using science,” Tavakoli said.
Continuous involvement in outreach to the community has inspired and grown the next generation of scientists. “I really like scientific outreach; it made a difference for me as an undergrad and as a high school student to engage in science research, and right now, I’m doing my Ph.D. So it really made an impact for me, and I want to continue encouraging other scientists,” Conde Del Moral said.
These anecdotes motivate Salaita to pursue the growth of this kind of event. While the long-lasting impacts of ASF on young minds are difficult to measure through data, stories showcase the true power of early education and exposure.
Henry Nguyen, fifth-year AE, who was representing Tech’s Design Build Fly club with a model aircraft, had a similar story to share. “When I was younger, the reason I actually came to Tech was because of a program called GT Catalyst. I don’t know if it’s still going, but that kind of outreach program made me want to come here, so that’s the cool thing about it,” Nguyen said.
ASF’s mission with these events is to celebrate both the diverse and unifying ideas of science that are a part of our everyday lives.
“I love just learning for learning’s sake. I think it’s so cool figuring out how things work and breaking things down, understanding the why and the how behind the natural occurrences of the world, ” Russ said.
Visit atlantasciencefestival.org/ to see the full calendar of events and learn more about the 2025 Atlanta Science Festival. Click this link festival.org/gatech/org for a list of all activities, presenters and events related to Tech.