UTAH SCIENCE CENTER AND UNIVERSITY OF UTAH
MEDIA RELEASE
March 21, 2006 — The Utah Science Center and the University of Utah will host the 2006 Salt Lake Valley Science and Engineering Fair Thursday and Friday, March 30 and 31 at The Tower at Rice-Eccles Stadium. The public is invited to attend the fair on March 31 between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m.
The 2006 event is the largest Salt Lake Valley Science and Engineering Fair ever, with 189 projects and 228 students registered. Students in grades five through 12 from Salt Lake, Granite, Murray and Tooele school districts will participate.
Cynthia Furse – director of the Center of Excellence for Smart Sensors at the University of Utah and associate professor of electrical and computer engineering – will be the keynote speaker during the March 31 awards ceremony. Her speech will begin at approximately 7:15 p.m. on March 31 and is titled “Stranger than Science Fiction: Engineering Today’s Gadgets.” The public is invited to the lecture.
The Salt Lake Valley Science and Engineering Fair provides opportunities for students to showcase their achievements and compete for valuable prizes. Top performers from the event will be invited to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, the world’s largest pre-college science fair. Every May, more than 1,400 students from some 40 countries gather to compete for $3 million in internships, grants, science equipment and prizes – including the grand prize: a $50,000 college scholarship.
Research categories for the fair include behavioral and social sciences, biochemistry, botany, chemistry, computer science, Earth science, engineering, environmental science, mathematics, medicine and health, microbiology, physics, space science and zoology.
The Salt Lake Valley Science and Engineering Fair is made possible by the Utah Science Center, the University of Utah, The Leonardo, Intel Foundation and almost a dozen additional sponsors. For more information, visit www.utahsciencecenter.org/sciencefair.
About the Utah Science Center
The Utah Science Center (www.utahsciencecenter.org) emphasizes creative and active exploration of the worlds of science and technology. The Science Center endeavors to create a culture and environment for exploring the factors and phenomena that affect our lives and shape our future. The Utah Science Center, along with Global Artways (www.globalartways.org) – Salt Lake City”s arts education program – and the Center for Documentary Arts (www.cdautah.org), will find a permanent home in The Leonardo (www.theleonardo.org), an art, culture and science center being developed in the former main Salt Lake City Public Library building on Library Square.
About the University of Utah
The University of Utah (www.utah.edu) is the flagship institution of the Utah System of Higher Education. Founded in 1850, it is the first and largest public higher education institution in Utah, with more than 28,000 students from all 50 states and 102 countries, and a campus comprising almost 1,500 acres in the western foothills of the Wasatch Range in Salt Lake City. A major academic and research institution with an extensive health sciences center, the university offers majors in 72 subjects at the undergraduate level and more than 90 major fields of study at the graduate level, including law and medical schools.