Within minutes of our arrival at the Festival we came upon a familiar figure: Thomas Alva Edison, or at least a close facsimile, in the person of Frank Attwood, an Orlando-based self-described “actorpreneur.” Toting a tattered brown briefcase and with an ancient phonograph in tow, Attwood was buttonholing visitors and regaling them with tales of the all-American inventor, who so personified the kind of innovation that today continues to undergird our Nation’s social and economic strength.

The displays and hands-on activities that covered the Mall—and filled other parts of downtown DC—were themselves great examples of pedagogical ingenuity.

• The National Aquarium challenged visitors to guess and discover whether various species of plants and animals now common in our environment are native or introduced. (Corn: native. Potatoes: introduced. Zebra mussels? Don’t get us started!)
• The Juneau Economic Development Council trucked in a 1,500-pound chunk of glacial ice that recently broke off Alaska’s Mendenhall Glacier so visitors could watch it melt in the Washington sun, a graphic backdrop for those wishing to learn about global climate change.
• Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory showed a brain-bending 3-D movie about how its National Ignition Facility hopes to harness the power of fusion energy, while the Oak Ridge National Laboratory—not to be outdone—had visitors play the role of living proton beams and sent them down a simulated particle accelerator to be smashed to smithereens at nearly the speed of light.
• The J. Craig Venter Institute’s bio-diesel-fueled educational bus showed off its approach to using sewage-eating bacteria to generate electricity, a process the Institute hopes to scale up to 1,000-gallon reactors in the next year or so.
• Space Exploration Technologies, better known as SpaceX, was there, showing off its Dragon capsule and elegantly engineered Merlin rocket engines—part of the fast-maturing commercial launch industry that promises to send cargo—and eventually crews—to the International Space Station.
• And at other booths large and small, children and their enthusiastic parents got help building rockets, extracting DNA, controlling soccer-ball-scoring robots, creating sundial watches, designing ultraviolet light detectors, and even learning about bizarre physics (“Make your own non-Newtonian fluid!” one booth boasted—proof that this was not your everyday street festival).

The Festival also provided fertile ground for that most American outlet of ingenuity: T-shirt designs. Among those we spotted: “Got Microbes?” (American Society for Microbiology); “Molecular Biology: All the Cool Kids are Doing It!” (Princeton University); and “Who Needs Statisticians?” (with, of course, a long list of people and professions that do, including “oceanographers, lawyers, and kings” to name just a few from that T-shirt’s fine print).

Of course, there is nothing like old-fashioned human star-power to get the next generation of scientists and engineers excited, which explains why some of the longest lines on the Mall were populated by youngsters seeking autographs from astronaut John Grunsfeld, “the Hubble-repairman”, and television’s “Bill Nye the Science Guy.”

Speaking of star power, President Obama himself gave the Festival a shout out, both at the White House Science Fair last week and in a video embedded in the Festival’s web site. “I hope you have fun exploring this festival,” the President said in his taped remarks.

Well, we sure did. All in all, it was a weekend that would have made Thomas Edison proud.

Check out photos from the festival, captured by OSTP's Phil Larson, below:

Dr. Holdren dons 3-D glasses in order to get the full effect of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory movie about how its National Ignition Facility hopes to harness the power of fusion energy.

An employee of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory explains to Dr. Holdren what the 3-D movie is depicting during the USA Science and Engineering Festival on Saturday.

An estimated half-a-million visitors experienced over 1,000 displays and demonstrations during this weekend's USA Science and Engineering Festival on the National Mall.

Dr. Holdren plays the part of a proton beam going through a simulated particle accelerator, which ends with a fantastic collision at the end by traveling at nearly the speed of light.

At the science and engineering festival, enthusiastic children and their parents got help building rockets, extracting DNA, controlling soccer-ball-scoring robots, creating sundial watches, designing ultraviolet light detectors, and even learning about bizarre physics.

President Barack Obama talks with the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) winners in the East Room of the White House, Jan. 13, 2010. January 13, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

That’s the focus of a prestigious Presidential award that was in the spotlight Wednesday in the East Room of the White House, when the President honored 100 winners of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest award bestowed by the U.S. Government upon scientists and engineers in the early stages of their independent research careers.

The President’s meeting with the PECASE winners showcased this Administration’s recognition that America’s global leadership in science and technology is not automatic, but depends on constantly cultivating new generations of ambitious and dedicated explorers in the sciences and engineering. And of course that national nourishing of curiosity starts even earlier than that, in the way we teach children about science, technology, engineering and mathematics. That’s why this event resonates strongly with those of last week, when the President announced an expansion of the “Educate to Innovate” campaign to encourage and inspire young students to pursue studies in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

Nine Federal departments and agencies join together annually to nominate the most meritorious young scientists and engineers for PECASE -- researchers whose early accomplishments show the greatest promise for strengthening America’s leadership in science and technology and contributing to the awarding agencies' missions. The awards are coordinated by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, with awardees selected on the basis of two criteria: Pursuit of innovative research at the frontiers of science and technology and a commitment to community service, as demonstrated through scientific leadership, public education, or community outreach. Winners receive up to a five-year research grant to further their study in support of critical government missions.

This year’s recipients were first announced over the summer and received their awards and met with the President Wednesday.  Their names and Federal Departments and Agencies can be seen in the official White House press release.

Rick Weiss is Director of Strategic Communications and a Senior Policy Analyst at the Office of Science and Technology Policy

• NIH has doubled the time allowed for parental leave on the certain training fellowship awards.
• NIH has provided guidance to research institutions on allowable ways to include child-care reimbursement and parental leave for scientists getting NIH grants, making it easier for grantees to remain in the scientific workforce while they build their families.
• NIH has provided supplements to postdocs who have left the scientific workforce for family reasons, to help them re-enter the scientific professional community.
• In the intramural program, NIH has "extended the clock" on the tenure-track process, to accommodate family leave. This helps women who are balancing their scientific and family responsibilities to achieve their tenure-track goals and transition to career scientists.

These policies are available to men, as well, but are sure to be especially helpful to women given the realities of how household duties are segregated in American culture. A splendid and representative example: Carol Greider was not awakened by the 5 a.m. call that announced she had won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. She was awake and up already—folding laundry!

The Obama Administration is committed to developing even more creative strategies to attract and retain women in the sciences. At a recent meeting of the White House Council on Women and Girls, which was created by President Obama in March to ensure that all Cabinet-level agencies consider how their policies and programs impact women and families, discussion focused in large part on how to draw more girls and young women into science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) educational programs.

As Senior White House advisor Valerie Jarrett put it on Meet the Press this past weekend: "One of our investments in the Obama Administration is trying to get more women into science, technology, engineering and math, so that they can go into fields and really compete on a level playing field with men."

STEM education is also a major focus of this week’s upcoming meeting of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. (Catch Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s presentation on the topic, which will be live-streamed on Friday.)

A final advance worth noting along these lines is President Obama’s recent nomination of Sara Manzano-Diaz to lead the Women’s Bureau at the Department of Labor. For almost 90 years, the Women’s Bureau has worked to improve the status of wage-earning women, improve their working conditions, and advance their opportunities for profitable employment. The Bureau is the only federal agency mandated to represent the needs of wage-earning women.

Manzano-Diaz previously served as Deputy General Counsel for Civil Rights and Litigation at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, where she enforced fair housing, civil rights, and anti-discrimination laws.

Taken together, these initiatives demonstrate this Administration’s commitment to advancing the role of women and girls in today’s world, including area such as the sciences in which women have long been underrepresented.

Rick Weiss is Director of Strategic Communications and Senior Science and Technology Policy Analyst at the Office of Science and Technology Policy

The Obama administration has pursued with real zeal an array of approaches to bolstering science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education (also known as "STEM ed"). These have ranged from formal federal grant programs such as Race to the Top, which is providing competitive grants to states that pump up the innovation in their academic programs, to events such as Astronomy Night on the White House lawn—the historic educational fest earlier this month that brought 150 local middle schoolers onto the South Lawn after sunset, where NASA astronomers and others pointed dozens of telescopes at the Moon, Saturn and its moons, and the furthest reaches of the universe.

The emphasis makes sense. Science and technology are responsible for a very large portion of this nation’s economic growth over the past 50 years. And scientists and engineers today are in the best position to solve many of the most pressing challenges facing the nation and the world, including energy shortages, climate change, inadequate healthcare, and poor nutrition.

It’s wonderful that this country was home to so many Nobel Prize winners this year. But STEM education is increasingly being appreciated as the key to assuring that America cultivates a new generation of experts as well, with the skills to create the new green technologies we need to strengthen our economy in the 21st Century.

STEM education will be a major topic at this week’s meeting of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, which will feature a STEM presentation by Education Secretary Arne Duncan. You can watch the livestream on Friday, Oct. 23, at 10:45 a.m., at obamawhitehouse.archives.gov or at www.OSTP.gov.

What do you think is going right, or wrong, with STEM education? Send your comments during Duncan’s talk via the White House Facebook account or via Twitter (use the hash tag #STEMcomment).