Director Stier was invited to give the keynote address to the 2026 Nevada STEAM Conference, one of the largest conferences for K-12 educators in Nevada. The annual conference is hosted by the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno in partnership with the Desert Research Institute, one of the world’s premier STEM research institutions. The goal of the conference is to “inspire educational innovation through engaging workshops and nationally recognized keynote speakers.”
Over 200 educators gathered to explore ideas and educational strategies to incorporate STEAM, design-based thinking, and practices to integrate arts in the classroom, to foster student creativity and innovative problem solving. This year’s theme, “Into the Time Horizon,” drew inspiration from the Museum’s feature exhibition of the same title and also explored ideas about the global environment, protecting the planet, and sustainability. The museum exhibit also incorporated many innovative features, such as using an algae-based material for all museum signage, rather than the conventional PVC-based signage materials.
Stier’s talk focused on using Nature and bioinspired innovation as a strategy for integrating art with STEM subjects. He began his talk by telling the story of how the melody of Beethoven’s famous 5th symphony was inspired by the song of the Yellowhammer bird, a story he recounts in his upcoming book, Bioinspired. After the keynote, he led the teachers in a hands-on activity exploring engineering topics based on curvatures found in schoolyard trees, part of the Engineering Inspired by Nature curriculum for middle and high schools.
Teachers use polarized sunglasses to explore structural engineering principles based on schoolyard trees
Other speakers at the conference included the renowned artist Jonathan Keats, who spoke about the clock he developed that keeps time based on the growth of millennia-old bristlecone pine trees. Last year’s conference’s keynote was given by Richard Louv.
