The second regional heat of FameLab USA’s Season 3 took place in San Francisco, CA on December 14-15th in conjunction with the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting. 14 early career scientists participated, and the research represented covered the gamut from cancer research to acid rain, GMO’s, and finding Earth-like planets elsewhere in the Universe!

Eight of the 14 advanced to the evening competition round, and gave their second 3-minute, powerpoint-free talk to a public audience of 150 people at the Rickshaw Stop night club. Jennifer Burt, an astrophysicist from UC Santa Cruz and Ilissa Ocko, a climate scientist from the Environmental Defense Fund were chosen as wild cards (they’ll have a chance to be selected as National Finalists later in 2016). Ed Roberts, an immunologist from UCSF was selected as the winner.

Ed will go on to compete with the other National Finalists in 2016 for the title of US National Champion – that winner will go on to the UK to compete with National Champions from 25 countries worldwide!