Reach For The Stars - STEM Festival - 2024-2025

March 8, 2025 - REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN

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• 2025 Detailed Information
• RFTS Exhibitors


• 2025 festival
• Info about the festival
• History of our Festivals
• RFTS Archive

2025 Festival

The 2025 Reach For The Stars keynote speaker is Dr. Julianne Pollard-Larkin.

Dr. Julianne Pollard-Larkin is an Associate Professor of Medical Physics at the University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX. She is the Service Chief medical physicist in MD Anderson’s Thoracic Radiation Oncology Clinic. Dr. Pollard-Larkin also conducts clinical research and mentors and teaches Medical Physics residents and graduate students. Her primary research interests include Flash ultra-high dose radiotherapy, pacemaker radiotherapy dose measurements and improving the efficacy of motion management in thoracic treatments and radiobiology. Julianne is also the Chair of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine’s (AAPM) Equity, Diversity and Inclusion committee.

She received her PhD in Biomedical Physics at UCLA and her B.S. in Physics and Mathematics at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Fl. After receiving her PhD at UCLA, Julianne was accepted into the Medical Physics Residency program at MD Anderson in Houston, Tx. Following her residency, Julianne was hired by MD Anderson as faculty.

Beyond her role in the clinic and classroom, Julianne is a firm believer in outreach and increasing the pipeline of women and underrepresented populations in science. Ensuring that more underrepresented students and women follow in her footsteps is Julianne’s passion.

Info about the festival

Middle school girls are invited to join us for a fun day of exciting hands-on activities and meet some amazing role models!

Each girl (or group of girls) must have an adult chaperone - a teacher or a parent or designate. Each adult can bring up to 10 girls. Instead of choosing individual workshops, each girl (or group of girls) 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 girls want one track and 4 girls 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 girl needs financial support, the chaperone/teacher should contact starfest@rice.edu; because of our amazing financial supporters, this year the Babs Foundation, we can offer scholarships to deserving girls.

Here are the interest tracks the girls can choose from (2023 Festival list shown as example):

• 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 2025 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 2025 our financial supporters are Wiess School of Natural Sciences, Rice Physics and Astronomy, Rice Space Institute, Rice R-STEM, the Babs Foundation and Discovery Dome. 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. 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).

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