Meet the SciStarter team in Philadelphia!

Come join the SciStarter team at that “Woodstock of Science,” the Philadelphia Science Festival this Saturday, April 21st. Stroll along the beautiful Ben Franklin Parkway amid hundreds of hands-on science experiments and exhibits! And, on Tuesday, 4/24, meet SciStarter founder Darlene Cavalier, Azavea (creators of Philly Tree Map, see below) CEO Robert Cheetham, and SciStarter contributor and birder extraodonaire Kate Atkins when they talk about citizen engagement in science at WHYY TV as part of the Philly Tech Week celebration! RSVP to this free event, here.

But first, on Saturday at the Philadelphia Science Festival, your SciStarter team will host our own exhibit (Booth 11 in the Blue Zone) featuring two different opportunities to participate in hands-on scientific research. Come say hello and check out our cool featured projects, including:

Mastodon Matrix Project In 1999 a yard project led the Lozler family of Hyde Park, NY to discover a nearly intact 14,000 year old mastodon skeleton. Now you can help scientists understand the ecology of the late Pleistocene era by sifting through the actual matrix (“dirt”) it was found in. Sign up to have some of the matrix mailed directly to your house so you can sift through it on a hunt for bits of shell, bone and plants. Your findings will be shared with the Paleontological Research Institution and combined with the work of thousands of other citizen scientists for an emerging picture of the environment in which mastodons once thundered.

PhillyTreeMap What is the economic and environmental benefit of the tree in front of your home? PhillyTreeMap will help you find out through this open-source, web-based map database of trees in the Philadelphia region. And they need your help identifying and cataloging other trees in Philadelphia’s urban forest.

We hope to see you on Saturday at the Philadelphia Science Festival and on Tuesday at the Philly Tech Week event!

This is a guest blog post by SciStarter contributor Jacqueline Lewis (who will also be at the Philadelphia Science Festival!).

About the Author

Darlene Cavalier

Darlene Cavalier is a professor of practice at Arizona State University's School for the Future of Innovation in Society and a Senior Global Futures Scientist, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at ASU. Professor Cavalier is the founder of SciStarter (a popular citizen science portal and research platform connecting millions of people to real science they can do), founder of Science Cheerleaders (a non profit organization comprised of current and former NFL, NBA and college cheerleaders pursuing STEM careers), cofounder of ECAST: Expert and Citizen Assessment of Science and Technology and cofounder of ScienceNearMe.org. She is a founding board member of the Citizen Science Association, an advisor and Fellow at National Geographic, a member of the EPA's National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and Technology, appointed to the National Academy of Sciences "Designing Citizen Science to Support Science Learning" committee and named cochair of America 250's Innovation, Science, and Entrepreneurism Advisory Council. She is the co-editor of "The Rightful Place of Science: Citizen Science," author of "The Science of Cheerleading," and co-author of the Field Guide to Citizen Science (Timber Press). Recently, ASU President Michael Crow awarded Cavalier and her team the prestigious Medal for Social Embeddedness.

View posts by Darlene Cavalier