The Bay Area Science Festival (BASF) is a series of public science events happening throughout the nine San Francisco Bay Area counties from October 29 through November 6, 2011. The BASF program features over 100 events. The biggest gatherings, "Discovery Days," happen at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, California State University in Hayward, and AT&T Park in San Francisco. Science lab tours, performances, lectures, star parties, and "wonder dialogues" round out the nine-day schedule.

On Saturday evening, Nov. 5th, the Festival sponsors a regional "star party," with telescope viewing and fun astronomy activities available free to the public in 21 locations around the Bay Area. For a full schedule of star party events, see: http://www.bayareascience.org/11/05/bay-area-star-party/

BASF planning is headquartered at the University of California, San Francisco

University of California, San Francisco

The University of California, San Francisco is one of the world's leading centers of health sciences research, patient care, and education. UCSF's medical, pharmacy, dentistry, nursing, and graduate schools are among the top health science professional schools in the world...

. BASF's creator is former National Academy of Sciences president Bruce Alberts

Bruce Alberts

Bruce Michael Alberts is an American biochemist known for his work in science public policy and as an original author of the Molecular Biology of the Cell...

, and its director is Kishore Hari. Principal institutional sponsors are Chevron, Genentech, and UC San Francisco. Funding comes, in part, from the National Science Foundation

National Science Foundation

The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...

.

External links

• Festival information Bay, Area Science web site