Celebrate UCI’s Bright Past and Brilliant Future with a day in Aldrich Park. The Festival of Discovery will feature interactive explorations of how UCI students, faculty and UC Irvine Health are impacting the world around us. Join the campus and the School of Social Sciences for a community celebration including food trucks, cover bands, family friendly activities and more.

School featured exhibits include:

INGENUITY + INNOVATION
Virtual Worlds, Disability, and New Cultures of the Embodied Self
How is the internet changing the ways that people - including those with disabilities - think of themselves as individuals and interact as members of communities? Anthropologist Tom Boellstorff provides insight on how people with disabilities are pioneering creative uses of technology in online, virtual worlds.

HEALTH + WELLNESS
Neurorobotics – Robotic Demonstration – Talk - Applications for Children with Autism
Carl-SJR isn’t your typical-looking robot, if in fact there is such a thing. It doesn’t have human-like features such as arms or legs, but it enjoys being touched and rubbed. It’s these combined traits that may just be what make the robot a winner with its target audience – children with autism and other developmental disorders. Learn more from cognitive scientist Jeff Krichmar and his graduate students.

Motion Sickness and Virtual Reality
UCI cognitive scientist Mike D’Zmura will demonstrate how virtual reality technology can be used to explore virtual environments and examine how to improve the comfort and usability of this
fascinating technology. His team is studying why some people experience motion sickness when they use virtual reality equipment and how the technology could be improved so that everyone will want to use it.
        
GLOBAL + LOCAL IMPACT
Olive Tree Initiative – Talk and OTI Film
OTI provides students, faculty and community participants with the education, training and experiences needed to better understand, negotiate and resolve conflicts. Hear personal stories from Olive Tree Initiative students, director Daniel Wehrenfennig and community members when they traveled to the Middle East and Turkey-Armenia.

Center for Citizen Peacebuilding –  Talk - Gang Intervention Training
Learn from prosecutors, corrections professionals, gang specialist police officers and gang counselors about critical work being done with urban minority youths and Southern California gangs from anthropologist Paula Garb and Al Valdez, UCI alumnus, lecturer and former police officer.
    
ARTS + CULTURE
Learning By Doing at the Farm – Talk, Slide Show, Timeline Photo Display
Visit an exhibit created by Anna Kryczka, co-author, Learning By Doing at the Farm, that illuminates a forgotten history of UCI and Orange County, a utopian experimentation of ethnic and racial diversity, and of experimental scientific and artistic practice. See how faculty and students developed new theories for understanding human difference, the Farm also served as a gathering site for members of the sixties countercultural movement.