THE
PRESIDENT: Thank you, everybody. Everybody, please have a seat. I am having so much fun! (Laughter.) It is great to see all of you here for our first White House Science Fair. I have been looking forward to doing this for a long time. One of the great joys of being President is getting to meet young people like all of you -- and some of the folks in the other room who I just had a chance to see some of their exhibits and the work that they were doing. It’s inspiring -- and I never miss a chance to see cool robots when I get a chance. (Laughter.)
We are joined by several Nobel laureates（桂冠诗人，得奖者） -– including our Energy Secretary, Dr. Steven Chu. (Applause.) These are obviously the older folks who have helped to expand the frontiers（边疆，尖端科学） of human knowledge. But we’re also joined by a few people who inspire young people to pursue that knowledge. One of them is the one and only Science Guy, Bill Nye, who’s in the house. (Applause.) I’m also pleased to welcome Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, known as the Mythbusters. (Applause.) I can announce today that I taped a special guest appearance for their show -- although I didn’t get to blow anything up. (Laughter.) I was a little frustrated with that.
I also want to welcome and congratulate Subra Suresh, who was sworn in this morning as the Director of the National Science Foundation, and who’s here with his family. Please stand up. (Applause.) We are very grateful to have Subra taking this new task. He has been at MIT and has been leading one of the top engineering programs in the country, and for him now to be able to apply that to the National Science Foundation is just going to be outstanding. So we’re very grateful for your service.
But the main reason I’m here is I just want to recognize all the incredibly talented young men and women who’ve traveled here from every corner of this country to demonstrate their experiments and their inventions. And I just had a chance to meet with some of them. And it’s hard to describe just how impressive these young people are. Their work –- from cancer therapies to solar-powered cars, water purification systems（净水器） , robotic wheelchairs -– all of it is a testament to the potential that awaits when we inspire young people to take part in the scientific enterprise: tackling tough problems; testing new hypotheses; to try, and then to fail, and then to try again until they succeed.
And it’s hard to single out（挑出，挑选） any of the folks that I -- who I met with, because everybody was so impressive. But just to give you one example: the last young lady that I talked to, between her freshman and sophomore years in high school, taught herself chemistry, and then decided that she wanted to see if she could create a new drug to deal with cancer cells using light activation, and won the international science competition, and is now being contacted by laboratories across the country to see if this might actually have applications in terms of curing cancer.
Now, if that doesn’t inspire you -- (laughter) -- if that doesn’t make you feel good about America and the possibilities of our young people when they apply themselves to science and math, I don’t know what will.
And so that’s just one example. Now, another example, in Tennessee there was a team that decided -- up in Appalachia, sometimes it’s hard to get purified water. And so they constructed an entire system, self-contained system, powered by -- with a water wheel that would purify water and could potentially be used for an entire community. So a very practical application of the knowledge that they had gained in the classroom.
You just saw example after example of that. And it’s incredibly impressive. The importance of tapping this potential is why we’re here. It’s why I wanted to host this fair, which culminates this weekend in a science and engineering festival on the National Mall and across the country where more than a million people are expected to participate.
So we welcome championship sports teams to the White House to celebrate their victories. I’ve had the Lakers here. I’ve had the Saints here, the Crimson Tide. I thought we ought to do the same thing for the winners of science fair and robotic contests, and math competitions. (Applause.) Because often we don’t give these victories the attention that they deserve. And when you win first place at a science fair, nobody is rushing the field or dumping Gatorade over your head. (Laughter.) But in many ways, our future depends on what happens in those contests -- what happens when a young person is engaged in conducting an experiment, or writing a piece of software, or solving a hard math problem, or designing a new gadget.
It’s in these pursuits that talents are discovered and passions are lit, and the future scientists, engineers, inventors, entrepreneurs are born. That's what’s going to help ensure that we succeed in the next century, that we're leading the world in developing the technologies, businesses and industries of the future.
And this is the reason my administration has put such a focus on math and science education -- because despite the importance of inspiring and educating our children in these fields, in recent years the fact is we’ve been outpaced by a lot of our competitors. One assessment shows that American 15-year-olds ranked 21st in science and 25th in math when compared to their peers around the world. Now, obviously the young people who are here all boosted our averages considerably. (Laughter.)
