Regeneron STS Deadline Approaching

Less than a month remains for high school seniors to enter the Regeneron Science Talent Search (STS), the nation’s oldest and most prestigious student STEM competition. They are seeking the next generation of leaders in science – and awarding $3.1 million to students AND their schools! The deadline to apply is November 7.

Join in on October 18^th at 5pm PT (8pm ET) to hear application advice from former finalists, judges, evaluators and more. Sign up here to attend, and don’t forget to ask your questions here to see them answered live. Find previous webinars and other helpful video content on their YouTube account.

To get started, visit the Application Instructions page. Note that online registration must be completed in a single session, so please have all necessary information ready before you begin. This includes the project title and category, sponsor contact details, and student/parent information for each team member.

Reminder: SRC pre-approval is necessary for projects involving biological materials, living organisms, hazardous chemicals, activities, devices, or regulated substances. It is also required for projects testing devices or software apps on human subjects or conducting surveys or interviews. To obtain SRC/IRB pre-approval, you must submit your application by November 13, 2024. To ensure a quicker response from the Scientific Review Committee (SRC), we strongly recommend completing your application by the earlier pre-approval date of October 30, 2024. Submitting by this date will likely result in an expedited SRC review.

A Teacher Workshop specifically geared to help teachers fill out the Synopsys Championship paperwork will be held virtually on Wednesday, Oct 9th from 4:30-5:30pm. Contact us for the zoom link.

It is strongly recommended for teachers who are new, relatively new or returning to the Championship attend the Teacher Workshop. The workshop will focus on how to fill out the forms correctly, especially projects that require SRC pre-approval, the importance of dates, and meeting Minimum Quality Requirements. It is strongly recommended that you take time to review the ISEF Rules and Guidelines and Contact us ahead of time with any questions you would like answered before joining the session.

Congratulations to Sophie Tong from Challenger School – Middlefield in Palo Alto and Tina Jin from The Harker School in San Jose who are in the Top 30 Thermo Fisher Junior Innovators Challenge. They are two of the eighteen students from the Synopsys Championship who advanced from the Top 300 semi-finalists. All 30 finalists receive a $500 cash award and will participate in Finals Week in Washington, D.C., October 25 to October 30. Check out the full press release for more details!

Congratulations to the Top 300 Thermo Fisher Scientific JIC Semi-finalists. 18 students, 13 projects from the Synopsys Championship are among the Top 300 semi-finalists in the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge competition. More than 1800 middle school students from across the United States participated in the 2024 competition. The Top 30 students (to be announced on Sept 18th) will compete for more than $100,000 in awards and prizes. Finalists will compete virtually October 24 – 30 by participating in team challenges in addition to being judged on their science research projects.

The Regeneron Science Talent Search 2025 application is open now until November 7th. In addition to the Intel ISEF and the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge programs, the Society for Science & the Public also owns and produces the Regeneron STS, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious competition for high school seniors.

ISEF, the International Science & Engineering Fair, visited Los Angeles, CA this year with 1600 finalists participating with the sponsorship of Regeneron. Finalists represented 49 states and 63 countries. Congratulations to all the participants from the Synopsys Championship and to the award winners announced on May 16 (special awards) and May 17 (scientific category awards). ISEF winners from the Championship are listed here.

Special congratulations to Michelle Wei for her ISEF top award, the Regeneron Young Scientist Award, as the finalist who was selected for her commitment to innovation in tackling challenging scientific questions, using authentic research practices and creating solutions to the problems of tomorrow. Her project in Systems Software is Solving Second-Order Cone Programs in Matrix Multiplication Time. She also joins Andrew Liang in being a “First Award” winner for their innovative research. His project in Behavioral and Social Sciences is GaitNet: A Medically Interpretable Video-Based System for Assessing Parkinsonian Gait Impairment Severity Using 2-Stream Spatiotemporal Neural Network.

The Athena Fellowship is a virtual summer fellowship for rising 9th-12th grade female students designed to empower future female leaders in STEM. Created by young women from Stanford, MIT, and Harvard, the fellowship seeks to identify top female students across the country. The 2024 Summer Fellowship will run from July 8th to August 2nd.

Applications for the 2024 Summer Fellowship are due June 12th. Admissions are rolling, meaning that applications are reviewed as they are received. Students are encouraged to apply as soon as possible. To learn more and apply, please visit www.athenafellowship.org. If you have any questions, please email info@athenafellowship.org.

Congratulations to our outstanding Santa Clara County students! 119 Synopsys Championship participants (105 projects) qualified to compete virtually at the California State Science & Engineering Fair on April 16th.  Winners were announced online and are posted on the CSEF web site.  SCVSEFA has a summary page of all 70 winning participants from the Synopsys Championship.

Special congratulations to Gauri Todur who was awarded Project of the Year in the Senior Division and Sophie Tong who was awarded Project of the Year in the Junior Division!

SCVSEFA announced the 2024 Synopsys Championship winners on the web site on April 7, click here to see results, including the students who qualified for CSEF and Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge (JIC) nominees.