Science is taking over UCSF’s Mission Bay campus later this month, and everyone’s invited.
After a three-year break, the Bay Area Science Festival, Northern California’s largest free science celebration, returns Oct. 25, with more than 120 hands-on experiments, demonstrations, and tours for all ages.
The one-day event runs from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and promises everything from live leopard sharks to a 30-foot whale skeleton, plus plenty of chances to touch, tinker, and explore.
The festival, organized by UCSF’s Science & Health Education Partnership, was first launched in 2011 and quickly became a beloved fall tradition. After several years at Oracle Park, where attendance reached around 20,000, the event is making its Mission Bay debut, with organizers expecting about 10,000 visitors.
Organizers said the festival’s hiatus was due to staffing changes and a move to the Mission Bay campus.
“It’s been a few years since our last festival, and we’re really excited to bring it to Mission Bay,” said Katherine Nielsen, director of the partnership. “This campus gives us new opportunities, like behind-the-scenes lab tours and stage events, that we couldn’t offer at the ballpark.”
Visitors can explore UCSF labs usually closed to the public, from neuroscience and human performance studies to cutting-edge robotics. One of the lab tours will show visitors how our brain processes our feelings every day, with scientists sharing their research on human emotions.
The popular “robot zoo” will return, featuring local high school robotics teams, alongside a variety of outdoor experiments. Festivalgoers can even roast marshmallows using sunlight and a parabolic mirror, peek at their own brainwaves, or learn how 3D printing helps surgeons plan operations.
There will be a screening of KQED’s “Deep Look” up-close wildlife videos — including Halloween-themed episodes featuring spiders, beetles, and owls — followed by a behind-the-scenes discussion about how the slow-motion nature series is made.
Visitors can also be a part of a live taping of That’s Absurd Please Elaborate — a podcast that answers all things weird and science — with hosts Trace Dominguez and Julian Huguet.
The festival brings together more than 85 Bay Area organizations, from UC Berkeley and Chabot Space & Science Center to the U.S. Geological Survey and Mission Science Workshop. For Nielsen, that collaboration is what makes the event so meaningful.
“It’s just a great time to experience everything from geology, learning about volcanoes to neuroscience and how our nerve cells work, how our brains work,” Nielsen said.
“One of the things I love about this festival is the connection,” she said. “You’re not just doing an activity, you’re talking with the scientists and engineers who do this work every day. We hear from attendees about how inspiring that is, and from researchers about how rejuvenating it feels to share their passion with the public.”
The festival is free and open to everyone, with food trucks and campus restaurants on site.
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