UCI festival promises worlds of discovery
UC Irvine’s Aldrich Park will be ready to entertain eager learners of all ages during the school’s first Festival of Discovery on Oct. 3.
The new event will celebrate the school’s 50th anniversary with an Anteater 5k and Family Fun Run at 7 a.m. and Discovery Pavilions for attendees to visit from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
The festival will set up four pavilions stations in the park — Health and Wellness, Local and Global, Ingenuity and Innovation, and Arts and Culture — manned by UCI researchers and other professionals.
At Health and Wellness, UCI’s School of Medicine will hold a presentation on Google Glass and allow guests to try on the spectacles. The school will share its research on how the glasses will transform medical care.
“It is a wearable computer and we want to use it to capture live video and photography,” said Warren Wiechmann, associate dean of instructional tecnhologies at the School of Medicine.
“In settings with students and physicians, we have students wear the Google Glass, play the role of the patient and document the procedures being done,” he said. “This will shed light on things like eye contact and if we’re making the patient feel comfortable. Those aspects are hard to quantify in surveys.”
The Gavin Herbert Eye Institute in Irvine will also set up a pediatric mobile eye clinic at the pavilion and offer complimentary screenings for children ages 3 to 5.
Local and Global representatives from the School of Humanities and UCI’s La Casa Nuestra, a dorm where students are encouraged to constantly practice their Spanish language skills, will play interactive card games with visitors to teach them some Spanish.
Ingenuity and Innovation will present Carl-SJR, a robot developed by the School of Social Sciences that assists children with autism or other developmental disorders, while Arts and Culture will have UCI drama actors entertain guests with an interactive Shakespearean experience.
For the Anteater 5k and Family Fun Run, interested participants can either race in a timed 5k run or a 1k Family Run that will not be timed. Both routes will end by the pavilions in Aldrich Park.
The 5k and Family route will be a run through the decades, where runners can expect to hear deejays play the music of the ‘60s, the decade the campus opened, through today as they stride through their path.
The festival is free for families, students and community members, but guests can register for a Discovery Pass online.
The 5k has a registration fee of $30 for individuals, $20 for students and $10 for children 17 and under. The 1k has a registration fee of $10 for adults while children ages 4 and under are free.
For registration for the Festival and the Anteater 5k and Family Fun Run, visit festivalofdiscovery.uci.edu.