Events List Navigation
February 2021
Teen Science Cafe: Deep Space AI—Navigating Swarms of Small Satellites Beyond Earth Orbit with Neural Networks
Academy of Science – Zoom
REGISTRATION REQUIRED. Space is limited. FREE and OPEN to all middle and high school students in grades 6-12. Please note a separate liability waiver for this cafe must also be completed by a parent/guardian for each attending teen. Pre-registration for Junior Academy of Science members ONLY through Friday, February 12. General registration for all opens Saturday, February 13. Deadline to register is Thursday, Feb 25, 4p.m., CST. Click the Event Information link below for more information and to REGISTER!
Train a neural network to recognize different objects in space in this interactive virtual Science Cafe for Teens on satellites in deep space and advanced spacecraft navigation techniques.
Deep Space AI is a Gateway Teen Science Cafe Event of the The Academy of Science – St. Louis presented in partnership with the Girls Can STEM Series initiative of The Academy of Science and the Zonta Club of St. Louis.
March 2021
Mars 2020/Perseverance Rover: Searching for Life on Mars
FREE and OPEN to ALL. Junior Academy members, middle and high school students welcome and encouraged to attend. Space is limited. Registration required. CLICK Event Information link below to REGISTER! Registrants will receive Zoom information via email immediately after registering.
Featured Speaker: Pablo Sobron, Ph.D., Founder & CEO, Impossible Sensing; Research Scientist, SETI Institute
St. Louis-based research scientist, Dr. Pablo Sobron, takes us along on his journey to discover life on the Red Planet. Learn about his experience as a member of NASA’s Mars 2020/Perseverance Rover Science Team and their mission to seek signs of ancient life on Mars and collect samples for return to Earth.
April 2021
Why are Chemical Contaminants Produced During Hydraulic Fracturing?
FREE and OPEN to ALL. Junior Academy members, middle and high school students welcome and encouraged to attend. Space is limited. Registration required. CLICK the orange Event Information button below to REGISTER! Zoom link to join sent with confirmation email immediately after registering.
Featured Speaker: Kimberly Parker, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Energy, Environmental, & Chemical Engineering, McKelvey School of Engineering, Washington University in St. Louis
Environmental engineer, Kimberly Parker, shares how her research group applied their expertise in environmental chemistry to understand how chemical contaminants are produced underground during hydraulic fracking and what might be done to avoid them.
Why are Chemical Contaminants Produced During Hydraulic Fracturing? is a Science in St. Louis Series partnership of the The Academy of Science – St. Louis and St. Louis County Library presented in collaboration with the Girls Can STEM Series initiative of The Academy of Science – St. Louis and the Zonta Club of St. Louis.
The Academy of Science – St. Louis Science Fair
The Academy of Science – St. Louis Science Fair is inquiry-based learning at its best! St. Louis students follow their passion as they explore the world they live in and make real world connections.
The Academy of Science – St. Louis Science Fair was the first fair in the nation offering an e-fair component over 10 years ago – which translated to a solution during this COVID 19 crisis! This year the science fair is a 100% online e-Fair with easy instructions and “how to” videos for teachers/students/parents and the brigade of e-Fair judges!
Science Fair project upload deadline is Thursday, April 22nd at noon. Students upload their project and logbook – limit of 10 pages each. New this year – Research Paper category – limit of 5 pages.
Judging begins Friday, April 23rd and ends on Wednesday, April 28th. Teams of judges from universities and STEM industries have been pre-selected and are ready to begin!
May 4th – Ribbon placement and awards announced!
Mysteries of the Moon: What We Still Don’t Know and What We’ll Achieve With Artemis
FREE and OPEN to ALL. Junior Academy members, middle and high school students welcome and encouraged to attend. Space is limited. Registration required. CLICK the orange Event Information button below to REGISTER! Zoom link to join sent with confirmation email immediately after registering.
Featured Speaker: Jeff Gillis-Davis, Ph.D., Associate Research Professor of Physics, Department of Physics, Washington University in St. Louis and the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences; Principal Investigator, The Interdisciplinary Consortium for Evaluating Volatile Origins (ICE Five-O), NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI)
How did Earth get its Moon? Why does its surface brightness vary? We’ve been to the Moon, why should we go back? For 50 years or more, people have asked these questions. Data and samples from the Apollo missions helped solve many of these mysteries. However, there are still questions that have been left unanswered—and even many more that arose as a result of the Apollo samples and subsequent robotic mission to the Moon. Astronomer and physicist, Jeffrey Gillis-Davis, presents some of these novel questions and describes how he and faculty at Washington University perform research to answer them.
Teen Science Café: One Health—How the Health of Humans, Animals and Environments are ALL Connected
REGISTRATION REQUIRED. Space is limited. FREE and OPEN to all middle and high school students in grades 6-12! Pre-registration for Junior Academy of Science members ONLY through Wednesday, April 21. General registration for all opens Thursday, April 22. Deadline to register is Monday, April 26, 4p.m., CST. CLICK the orange Event Information button below to REGISTER! Look for Cafe login information in your email confirmation.
Click Here to learn about the Junior Academy of Science and how to become a member.
One Health is an interdisciplinary approach to preserving the health of our planet. It recognizes that the health of people is closely connected to the health of animals and our shared environment.
In this informative and hands-on Science Café for Teens, the Saint Louis Zoo’s Director of the Institute for Conservation Medicine (ICM), Dr. Sharon Deem, and Conservation Education Liaison, Keri Lammering, share their work with the ICM, telling the story of Dr. Deem’s personal and professional journey into wildlife veterinary epidemiology and providing an overview of the growing One Health movement, centered on real-world conservation and human public health programs led by the Zoo’s ICM. You’ll take part in an interactive role-play exploration of the Institute’s project on camel health and human food security in Kenya, East Africa.
May 2021
Famished: Eating Disorders and Failed Care in America
FREE and OPEN to ALL. Junior Academy members, middle and high school students welcome and encouraged to attend. Space is limited. Registration required. CLICK the orange Event Information button below to REGISTER! Zoom link to join sent with confirmation email immediately after registering.
Featured Speaker: Rebecca J. Lester, Ph.D., Professor of Sociocultural Anthropology, Washington University in St. Louis; and author, Famished: Eating Disorders and Failed Care in America; recipient, 2020 Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing
St. Louis-based anthropologist and therapist Rebecca Lester takes us inside a private eating disorders clinic to explore why treatments so often fail, and what to do about it.
Teen Science Cafe: Putting COVID in Its Place—GIS Mapping and Locating Our Own Experiences with the Pandemic’s Social Changes
REGISTRATION REQUIRED. Space is limited. FREE and OPEN to all middle and high school students in grades 6-12! Pre-registration for Junior Academy of Science members ONLY through Saturday, May 1. General registration for all opens Sunday, May 2. Deadline to register is Thursday, May 13, 4p.m., CST. CLICK the orange Event Information button below to REGISTER! Look for Cafe login information in your email confirmation.
Click Here to learn about the Junior Academy of Science and how to become a member.
In this interactive virtual café for teens with medical sociologist, Dr. Chris Prener, we’ll talk about what GIS is, how we can capture qualitative data about places and experiences, and how with maps we can communicate the effect COVID-19 has had on our lives. We’ll do this by using Google to create maps of how our own experiences with place have changed in the last year. Sometimes called “volunteered geographic information,” this approach to collecting data has a wide range of research applications.
June 2021
Dr. Luisi Presents: The Good, the Bad, and the Trending Health Messages in Media
FREE and OPEN to ALL. Junior Academy members, middle and high school students welcome and encouraged to attend. Space is limited. Registration required. CLICK the orange Event Information button below to REGISTER! Zoom link to join sent with confirmation email immediately after registering.
Featured Speaker: Monique Luisi, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Strategic Communication, Missouri School of Journalism, University of Missouri – Columbia
In a world, full of information, we are constantly making choices about who to believe and what to trust. Those decisions are especially important in minority communities. Dr. Monique Luisi talks about messaging related to the HPV and COVID-19 vaccines, the influence of media, and the challenges our communities face to raise awareness, build trust, and fight disease.
Astronomy on Tap: Conversation with an Astronaut
FREE! Open to the public. All ages welcome! Registration not required. CLICK the Event Information button below for more information and the YouTube link to join on June 7, 7PM, CST. Grab a drink, a snack, and settle in from the comfort of home for a special one-hour conversation (driven by you) with astronaut, St. Louis native, and Washington University in St. Louis alum, Bob Behnken!
Featured Speaker: Colonel Robert Behnken, Ph.D., astronaut, NASA
Bob Behnken was selected as an astronaut by NASA in 2000 and is a veteran of three space flights. A native of Missouri, Colonel Behnken flew space shuttle missions STS-123 in March 2008 and STS-130 in February 2010. He most recently served as Joint operations Commander on the first crewed flight of the SpaceX Crew Dragon, the Demo-2 mission, which landed on August 2, 2020. He has accumulated 93 days in space and 61 hours of extra-vehicular activity time during ten spacewalks.
Advancing Space Exploration Using Multi-Robot Systems and Swarms and The Solar-Powered Lunar Ark Concept
FREE and OPEN to ALL. Junior Academy members, middle and high school students welcome and encouraged to attend. Space is limited. Registration required. CLICK the orange Event Information button below to REGISTER! Zoom link to join sent with confirmation email immediately after registering.
Featured Scientist: Jekan Thanga, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, Space and Terrestrial Robotic Exploration (SpaceTREx) Laboratory, Asteroid Science, Technology and Exploration Research Organized by Inclusive eDucation Systems (ASTEROIDS) Laboratory, Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, The University of Arizona
The exploration and development of Cislunar Space and beyond will be pivotal in securing and sustaining human civilization in the centuries to come. University of Arizona space robotics engineer Jekan Thanga and colleagues are leveraging small teams of university researchers and students to take on ambitious, high-risk, high-reward exploration missions that use multiple spacecrafts, or robots, working in teams that are analogous to colonies of social insects. Jekan’s and colleagues’ studies point to multiple promising pathways that produce new architectures and
robust solutions to some critical challenges that await space exploration and development. You won’t want to miss this fascinating look at space exploration in service to sustaining human civilization and the solar-powered lunar ark concept to store cryogenically frozen seed, spore, sperm and egg samples from 6.7 million Earth species.
July 2021
Would You Like a Nudge from a Robot?
FREE and OPEN to ALL. Junior Academy members, middle and high school students welcome and encouraged to attend. Space is limited. Registration required. CLICK the orange Event Information button below to REGISTER! Zoom link to join sent with confirmation email immediately after registering.
Featured Scientist: Yun Seong Song, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering; Director, Physical Human-Robot Interaction Laboratory (pHRI Lab), Missouri University of Science & Technology
We’re all familiar with robots like unmanned drones or large industrial robots that operate in solitude. In the future, human-robot interactions that involve direct physical contact are likely to become even more ubiquitous—from social-physical robots that might assist human teachers in the classroom to versatile medical robots that tackle clinical challenges in the acute care of patients. While it may feel awkward to have a robot grab and pull us around, future robots may become better at it—if we understand how humans do it and let the robots learn from the ‘experts.’ Mechanical engineer, Yun Seong Song, presents what we know about physical interactions in humans and what to do next to make future robots feel more friendly and helpful, with enhanced abilities to communicate through touch.
August 2021
Science in St. Louis
Check back for more information and registration coming soon!
FREE and OPEN to ALL. Junior Academy members, middle and high school students welcome and encouraged to attend. Space is limited. Registration required. INFO and REGISTRATION coming soon! Registrants will receive Zoom information via email immediately after registering.
September 2021
The Ants of Missouri Project
FREE and OPEN to ALL. Junior Academy members, middle and high school students welcome and encouraged to attend. Space is limited. Registration required. CLICK the orange Event Information button below to REGISTER! Registrants will receive Zoom information via email immediately after registering.
October 2021
The Story Collider: Stories About Science—METAMORPHOSIS
Public Media Commons
3651 Olive Street, St. Louis, MO 63108
The Story Collider helps people from all walks of life—from scientists to doctors to patients to engineers to teachers to firefighters—tell their personal stories about science. Join us on the Public Media Commons at St. Louis Public Radio in Grand Center for four true, personal stories of pivotal metamorphosis moments that transformed lives!
REGISTRATION REQUIRED. Cost: $10 per person. CLICK the orange Event Information button for tickets and speaker lineup.
Produced by Sam Lyons and Charlie Blake, with Eli Chen. This show is held in collaboration with St. Louis Public Radio.
Indigenous Models of Sustainability | The Whitney R. Harris World Ecology Center Conservation Forum
Zoom – Saint Louis Zoo, St. Louis, MO United States
FREE and OPEN to ALL. REGISTRATION REQUIRED. Click the orange Information Button for speaker lineup and to register. Please note that this Zoom event is limited to one device per registration.
Each year, the Whitney R. Harris World Ecology Center at the University of Missouri – St. Louis organizes and co-sponsors the Whitney and Anna Harris Conservation Forum in partnership with the Missouri Botanical Garden, the Saint Louis Zoo, and The Academy of Science – St. Louis. The forum provides an opportunity for interaction between conservation organizations and the general public. The forum hosts 3-4 speakers with a panel discussion following. This event is meant to promote learning, discussion, and new viewpoints.
Native Foods, Native Peoples, Native Pollinators
—a 2021 Indigenous Knowledge & Sustainability – Food Conference virtual session
FREE and OPEN to ALL. REGISTRATION REQUIRED. Click the orange Information Button for more information and to register. Please note that this Zoom event is limited to one device per registration.
Featured Speaker: Ed Spevak, Ph.D., Curator of Invertebrates, Saint Louis Zoo; and Director, Wildcare Institute Center for Native Pollinator Conservation, Saint Louis Zoo
Dr. Spevak talks about the initiative, Native Foods, Native Peoples, Native Pollinators. The initiative focuses on the intersection of wild and cultivated foods, cultural traditions and food sovereignty, the health of environments, and people and nature.
American Indian Gardens
—a 2021 Indigenous Knowledge & Sustainability – Food Conference virtual session
FREE and OPEN to ALL. REGISTRATION REQUIRED. Click the orange Information Button for more information and to register. Please note that this Zoom event is limited to one device per registration.
Featured Speakers:
Devon A. Mihesuah, Ph.D. (Choctaw Nation), Cora Lee Beers Price Professor in International Cultural Understanding, University of Kansas
and
Elizabeth Hoover, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management, University of California Berkeley
Mihesuah and Hoover co-edited, Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the United States: Restoring Cultural Knowledge, Protecting Environments, and Regaining Health (University of Oklahoma Press, 2019).
Indigenous Foods & Sustainability
—a 2021 Indigenous Knowledge & Sustainability – Food Conference virtual session
FREE and OPEN to ALL. REGISTRATION REQUIRED. Click the orange Information Button for more information and to register. Please note that this Zoom event is limited to one device per registration.
Featured Speakers:
Tiffanie Hardbarger, Ph.D. (Cherokee Nation), Assistant Professor, Cherokee and Indigenous Studies, Northeastern State University – Tahlequah, Oklahoma
and
Elizabeth Hoover, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management, University of California Berkeley
Tiffanie Hardbarger and Elizabeth Hoover, specialists in indigenous food systems, Native sovereignty, and related fields, speak about their research and projects and their ideas about ways that indigenous perspective and practices can support sustainability in food production and food justice—for Native people and everyone. Dialogue to follow.
Microbes and Electricity – A Journey through Earth’s History
FREE and OPEN to ALL. Junior Academy members, middle and high school students welcome and encouraged to attend. Space is limited. Registration required. Click the orange Information Button for more information and to register. Registrants receive Zoom link to join via email immediately after registering.
Featured Speaker: Arpita Bose, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Biology and Principal Investigator, the Bose Lab; Packard Foundation Fellow and Anant Fellow for Climate Action, Department of Biology, Washington University in St. Louis
In this fascinating talk on microbes and electricity, Arpita Bose talks about how the Bose Lab is studying modern microbes whose ancient relatives might have led to the deposition and formation of our largest source of iron ore in sedimentary rock structures called Banded Iron Formations (BIFs). Geologists and geo-microbiologists argue about the ancient microbiological processes that might have led to BIF deposition, including the seeming impossibility of microbes surrounded by rust to survive and even grow while being embedded in these iron coffins. Arpita and her Bose Lab colleagues have accumulated substantial evidence showing this feat can indeed be accomplished by BIF depositing microbes that are using electrical current through rust; and she shares how the Lab is leveraging this process today to find climate change solutions.