Buckle up, nerds! We’ve got a stellar cat-tastic catastrophe for you.

Three fun-yet-informative visual presentations with music, prizes, refreshments and guaranteed good company.

Author and journalist Alex Davies joins us with test engineering: the weird, fascinating, occasionally dangerous work of figuring out how things fail before they kill you. It involves shooting dead chickens into jet engines, dropping safes from four stories up, strapping a guy to a rocket sled at 647 miles per hour, and — yes — wild bear stuff! His book Kobuk the Destroyer: And Other Tales from the Wild, Unseen World of Test Engineering will be on sale at the show! We’ve got a self-proclaimed (and proud) crazy cat lady! Anthropologist and Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Southern Maine, Dr. Susan Rottmann brings us “A Non-Scientific and Barely Anthropological Study of Cat Humor.” Representations of cats reflect broader concerns about independence, identity, gender, loneliness, consumerism, uncertainty, and the desire for affection. And we are so honored to welcome Liz Kennick, the CEO of Teachers in Space (TiS), a nonprofit dedicated to educating teachers about space. Participating teachers build CubeSats, tiny satellites with embedded sensors that capture data (such as radiation sensors and sound levels) which are then launched on low-altitude balloons and beyond!

Be there and be square!

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