Just a few days before we kicked off the month-long San Diego Science Festival in March, I wrote a post for the Xconomist Forum that concluded, “if we mean to achieve the essential goal of reviving American Science, the San Diego Science Festival is poised to provide an important start.”
It proved to be a daunting task: 30 days; 350 collaborating organizations; 500 free events; 200,000 participants. So, what did I learn from spearheading this event? (More on that later.) And why am I taking on an even larger initiative—the creation of the first National Science Festival in Washington D.C.?
One reason is because it matters. It matters because scientific breakthroughs are crucial to our innovation economy. It also matters because our leadership in science and technology innovation is central to the way we view ourselves as Americans. From Ben Franklin to Thomas Edison and Burt Rutan, we see ourselves as ingenious, entrepreneurial, independent, and inventive.
Our goal for the inaugural San Diego Science Festival was to celebrate science with a science party because—to quote inventor, entrepreneur and FIRST Robotics founder Dean Kamen—“Society gets what it celebrates.” What he means is that if scientists are perceived as boring and science careers as dull, Nobel Laureates can’t compete with rock stars or sports heroes in the minds of our nation’s youth. But if scientists are perceived as cool and sexy, then perhaps our next generation can see science careers as a way to improve the world. So our goal was to create the festival as a fun opportunity for our community and or city to come together to discover, explore, discuss, be amazed, and be inspired.
We modeled the San Diego Science Festival after popular science festivals in Europe and Australia. These festivals last seven to fourteen days, and draw between 100,000 and 1 million people to celebrate science through inspiring lectures, hands-on activities and exhibits, contests, theatre, comedy, poetry, art, film, and music—all celebrating science.
To make a lasting impression among San Diego’s youth, our month-long festival rolled out in a progression:
—First, we brought scientists to
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Author: Larry Bock
In Memoriam: Our friend and Xconomist Larry Bock passed away on July 6, 2016. We at Xconomy are deeply saddened by his loss.
Larry Bock is the founder and organizer of the USA Science & Engineering Festival, and a former founder of the San Diego Science Festival. Mr. Bock is a Special Limited Partner to Lux Capital, a $100M nanotechnology-focused venture capital fund. He is a member of the Board of Directors of FEI Corporation (NASDAQ: FEIC), the leading supplier of tools for nanotechnology research. He is a General Partner of CW Ventures, a $100M life sciences venture capital fund.
Mr. Bock was the founder and former executive chairman and initial CEO of Nanosys and the founder and initial CEO of Neurocrine Biosciences (NASDAQ: NBIX), Pharmacopeia (NASDAQ: PCOP), GenPharm International, which was acquired by Medarex for $100 million; Caliper Technologies (NASDAQ: CALP); Illumina Technologies (NASDAQ: ILMN), among numerous other firms.
He was also a seed or early-stage investor in variety of firms, including Acceleron Pharma, Aurora Biosciences, Biosym Technologies, ekoVenture. Gen-Probe, Gensia Pharmaceuticals, Genocea Biosciences, IDEC Pharmaceuticals Magen Biosciences, Oclassen Pharmaceuticals Plexikon Pharmaceuticals, Poland Partners, Sequana Therapeutics, Sapphire Energy, Siluria, Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, Software Transformation, and Viagene.
Mr. Bock started his career as a researcher in the early days at Genentech, the field of infectious diseases, where he was on the team that received the AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize for demonstrating the world’s first recombinant DNA vaccine. He was a Venture Capital Associate with Fairfield Ventures (now Oxford Bioventures).
Larry and his wife, Diane, established the Larry and Diane Bock Chair in Nanotechnology at the University of California, Berkeley. They also founded Community Cousins, a non-profit foundation focused on breaking down racial barriers, that was selected by former Vice President Al Gore as one of 10 outstanding grass root efforts nationally. Larry is organizing the San Diego Science Festival with BioBridge of UCSD. He works extensively with the Sudanese and Burmese refugee’s networks in San Diego and is a tutor in math and sciences for Sudanese refugee children in St. Lukes Sudanese Refugee Network and a Mentor for Burmese refugee families through Jewish Family Services. Larry received his B.A. in Biochemistry (summa cum laude) from Bowdoin College and his M.B.A. from the Anderson School at UCLA.
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