On October 23 2010, MicrobeWorld attended the first annual USA Science and Engineering Festival on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. In part 1 of this two-part video, Stanley Maloy, Dean of the College of Science at San Diego State University, takes us on a tour of the microbiology related exhibits at the festival.Featured in this episode are the American Society for Microbiology booth "Where the Microbes Are (Everywhere!)" and the members of the Microbial Sciences Initiative at Harvard University.Watch as Maloy introduces us to the power of microbes through demonstrations of biospheres created in a bottle, the bioluminescent bobtail squid, and the many different roles microbes play in the creation of food products.