Just prior to the start of the 2015 Society of Toxicology Annual Meeting in San Diego, several 
dozen SOT members enjoyed a warm sunny day assisting in the ToxTown booth at the annual San Diego Festival of Science and Engineering grand finale event, EXPO Day, at Petco Park stadium, on Saturday, March 21, 2015. The ToxTown booth featured an assembly line of activities.
The goal of the festival is to raise awareness of the importance of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education and to encourage San Diego’s K-12 students to pursue education and careers in these exciting fields.
Over 20,000 attendees participated in EXPO Day’s 130 booths and SOT was well-represented in ToxTown. The Southern California Regional Chapter of SOT (SCCSOT) led by ToxTown “mayor” Virunya Bhat, hosted this event. Funding for this project was provided through an SOT Regional Chapter Strategic Funding grant and corporate K–12 sponsor funds, with support of the SOT K–12 Education Subcommittee, which is chaired by Angela Slitt and co-chaired Dr. Bhat. The photo on the left is of SOT K–12 Subcommittee member Marie Bourgeois and Dr. Bhat holding figures of Einstein.
The students toured ToxTown by first watching a Risk Bites episode on YouTube produced by 2015 SOT Communications Award recipient Andrew Maynard, who was on hand in the flesh! Students then progressed to a caffeine module learning about dose-response and that caffeine is not always bad for you (see photo on right). At Folding Handangos, participants learned about proper hand washing and the "animated" germs captivated the younger crowd.
By far, the favorite activity was Tic-Tac-Tox, in which students spun the cubes to answer toxicology true or false questions, hoping to get three-in-a-row to win an SOT-captioned Einstein (see photo on left). Many students approached the booth having never heard of risk or toxicology, but left quite intrigued.
The last stop on the tour was a participant survey, which will provide the SOT Education Committee with valuable metrics. Many thanks to SCCSOT and our global slate of SOT member and Annual Meeting attendee volunteers who ensured the event was a tremendous success as evidenced by the non-stop traffic all day and the multiple social media tweets and “likes”!