Festival Description:

Founded in 1998, Wonderfest is the oldest science festival in the United States. It is jointly produced by the Stanford University Chemistry Department, the UC Berkeley Physics Department, and Wonderfest, a non-profit educational project of the Branson School in Marin County, California.

Wonderfest’s broad goals are best described by its mission statement: Through public discourse about provocative scientific questions, Wonderfest aspires to stimulate curiosity, promote careful reasoning, challenge unexamined beliefs, and promote life-long learning.

Wonderfest achieves these goals by producing free public science events that include:

• Signature dialogues between pairs of world-class researchers in discussion of compelling scientific questions;
• The Bechtel WonderCup Challenge science contest among age- and gender-balanced teams of Bay Area high school students;
• The $5000 Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization, presented annually to a Bay Area researcher who makes exceptional contributions to the public understanding of science;
• The Amateur Science Forum and the Bay Area Science Expo, where artists, authors, craftspeople, clubs, professional societies, etc. share their love of science;
• Science Stories and Science Laughs, presenting researchers and comedians who bring the more human side of science to light.

Wonderfest receives generous support from Annual Reviews, the Stephen Bechtel Fund, the Harold F. & Suzanne D. Falk Foundation, and Wind River Systems.

Wonderfest’s creator and director is Tucker Hiatt.  Its technical director is Eric Yao.  Wonderfest is dedicated to the memory of Carl Sagan, who wrote: “I hold that the popular-ization of science is successful if, at first, it does no more than spark the sense of wonder.”