Reach For The Stars - STEM Festival

The 2026 festival was amazing as usual. We got many emails saying how fun and inspiring the event was. If you missed it, you can still watch the keynote below.

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• 2026 Festival Recap
• 2026 Detailed Info
• info for RFTS Exhibitors


• Info about the festival
• History of our Festivals
• RFTS Archive

2026 Festival Recap

The Reach For The Stars 2026 Keynote speaker was Nujoud Merancy, the deputy associate administrator for the Strategy & Architecture Office (SAO) in the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate (ESDMD) for NASA Headquarters, based at Johnson Space Center. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from the University of Washington and a Master of Science in Systems Engineering from the University of Houston–Clear Lake. She will be speaking on her career and the Artemis flights to the Moon. She is a recipient of a NASA Exceptional Public Service Medal, Rotary National Award for Space Achievement Stellar Team Award, and the Silver Snoopy, an award that NASA astronauts bestow for outstanding contributions to flight safety, for designing the space station’s loss of attitude control warning.

Info about the festival

Middle school students (ages 9-13) are invited to join us for a fun day of exciting hands-on activities and meet some amazing role models!

Each student (or group of students) must have an adult chaperone - a teacher or a parent or designate. Each adult can bring up to 10 students. Instead of choosing individual workshops, each student (or group of students) will choose an "interest track" and will get two hands-on workshops and a job panel discussion related to that track, plus the keynote and time in the exhibit area. If, for example, 6 students want one track and 4 students want a different track, then there needs to be two chaperones (one for each group).

There is a modest registration fee to cover lunch; however, if any student needs financial support, the chaperone/teacher should contact starfest@rice.edu; because of our amazing financial supporters, this year the Babs Foundation and the Association of Professionals and Students, we can offer full scholarships to deserving students.

Here are the interest tracks the students can choose from:

• A: SPACE and ASTRONOMY
• B: PHYSICS, CHEMISTRY, EARTH SCIENCE or MATH
• C: MEDICINE (including space medicine and Bioscience)
• D: ENGINEERING and ROBOTICS

If you would like to be an exhibitor please check out our exhibitor page and fill out the 2026 Reach for the Stars Exhibitor Registration Form

If you would like to be a presenter, volunteer, or financial contributor, send an email to starfest@rice.edu. This year we are using NO FEDERAL FUNDS for this event. We are especially grateful to our financial sponsors. In 2026 our financial supporters are Wiess School of Natural Sciences, Rice Physics and Astronomy, Rice Space Institute, Rice R-STEM, the Babs Foundation, Discovery Dome, and the Association of Professionals and Students. We would love more sponsors in the future!

History of our Festivals

Since middle school is the age where girls typically lose interest in science, Sally Ride asked us to work with her to create festivals to excite and inspire them. (This result is well documented by educational research, and in fact recent surveys indicate that this interest is declining). The result was that in 2006, Rice University began hosting the annual Sally Ride Science Festival. Sally Ride herself was the first speaker and often hailed the Rice event as the largest and best attended of her festivals. Each annual Festival includes a street fair, an inspiring talk by a woman astronaut, and roughly thirty women-led science and engineering workshops (each student attends two).

In upcoming events, our focus will still be on inspiring girls at this critical time in their lives, but boys will be able to attend if desired.

Starting in 2016, our Festival was renamed the "Reach for the Stars! STEM Festival", and is sponsored by the Ride Family Foundation and Rice Space Institute, with major funding from many other donors.

Sept 30, 2023 was our 15th Festival since the first in 2006 with Sally Ride as speaker. In 2023 we had Dr. Shannon Walker as our Keynote Speaker. Shannon holds three degrees in Space Science from Rice University (BS, MS and PhD), and was the first woman to fly to the ISS on the Dragon as part of "Crew 1" (check out her amazing photos).

• Reach For The Stars Festival ARCHIVE