Families are greeted by the sound of laughter and whirring robots upon arrival to Family Science Days in Texas’ Austin Convention Center.

A blue-ribbon coalition of fifty-six leading U.S. nonpartisan organizations, representing more than 10 million scientists and engineers, are calling on U.S. Presidential candidates to address a set of twenty major issues in science, engineering, health and the environment, and encouraging journalists and voters to press the candidates on them during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election season.