Bay Area Science Festival 2013: A Major Success!

With 28,000 attendees, the 2013 Bay Area Science Festival was a huge success. On Saturday, November 2, children and adults were scattered throughout the AT&T baseball field enjoying fun in the sun, and a stadium full of science. With the many different exciting exhibits, games, and entertainment, no one wanted to go home when it came to closing time.

The UCSF Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging had a booth there with many interactive activities to drum up excitement about radiology. We created a game called, “Match That Bone,” where we showed kids and adults different x-ray images on an iPad. Then, we had them try to match those images to a skeleton model. Our booth also featured a power point slide highlighting the department’s ten subspecialties. We played an MRI video, a video of Dr. Bill Dillon explaining steps to becoming a radiologist, and a video of Dr. Brett Elicker talking about radiation exposure.

This is the first year the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging has participated in the science festival, and we hope to make it an annual tradition. Especially, when many parents and children were asking, “What is radiology?” It’s rewarding to answer these types of questions. It gives the Department the chance to interact with the residents of San Francisco, share our experiences, and spread our knowledge.

We personally would like to thank everyone who volunteered to help make the booth a success: Thank you Bob Kerlan, MD, and Kathy Knoerl, Operations Director Radiology, for volunteering and showing your support; Matt Eltgroth, MD, Nick Burris, MD, Mariam Aboian, MD, Kevin Koo, MD, Nancy Benedetti, MD, Hriday Shah, MD, Marcel Brus-Ramer, MD, PhD, Craig Devincent, Ben Mow, Rebecca Galagaran, Javier Villanueva-Meyer, MD, and Vignesh Arasu, MD for sharing your knowledge on radiology; and Etay Ziv, MD and Mercedes Curutchet for making the MRI video.