Saturday, September 29, 2012

100 Years of Science Event Conference


Today we attended the 100 Years of Science Event Conference at Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ. The conference was hosted by the Girl Scout Councils of New Jersey and The Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education, and sponsored by the PSE&G Foundation.

We worked with student volunteers from Stevens' Society of Women Engineers as well as Girl Scout volunteers on alternative energy experiments which included photovoltaic systems, solar water heaters, and wind turbines. There was also a panel of Stevens' women students who shared some of their experiences and answered some of our questions.

The 100 Years of Science Event Conference's keynote speaker was Dr. Pamela Conrad, astrobiologist and mineralogist in the Planetary Environments Laboratory of the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. We were honored to hear that she flew in from California last night and woke up at 3:30 a.m. this morning to drive up to Stevens to give the keynote! Dr. Conrad's presentation included stories of when she was a Girl Scout, and how she got two music degrees before deciding that she loved science also and followed that path later in her career. She encouraged us to follow our passions, no matter when in life the idea occurs to us. Dr. Conrad also spoke passionately about her expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctica, and deep-sea exploration in a submersible. She is currently working with the Curiosity Mars Rover, and showed us very cool pictures which helped explain some of the discoveries.

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