Judging Folders Opening Soon!

The process to send out Judging Folder links is expected to be complete by late on Saturday, Feb 26. Students will follow the links and the new steps on their Project Pages. If you don’t receive a link, check your Spam folder and all your email addresses; then contact the Fair Administrators. Links will be sent to the address you used when you registered.

The Championship Judging Team welcomes volunteer helpers at the virtual Synopsys Championship.  

• Help Desk assistants will join the In-Person team in South San Jose and forward phone calls to the experts on March 9 from 1 to 6 pm and March 10 from 12 to 6 pm.
• Interview Room monitors may work from their home computers on March 10 from 12 to 6 pm.

To get more details, please send email to Volunteer Opportunities via the SCVSEFA contact page.

Please request changes to your project title, field of study, etc. – or to withdraw from science fair – by midnight on Wednesday, February 23. Then the database will close, meta-information will be locked, and judging assignments will begin. 

• Check Project Status with the button on the home page. After February 23 any Incomplete project will become Not Qualified.
• Is the Field of Study accurate? and the category (RRI or non-RRI)? 
• Is the title correct, are student names spelled correctly, and is it listed by the correct teacher/sponsor name?
• If the project is Incomplete, upload whatever information has been requested to your Forms Folder. Inform the reviewer (or whoever made the request) by email with your project code in the subject line.
• If you need to withdraw or make changes, send email to Fair Manager, using the Fair Administration link on the SCVSEFA contact page.

If your project is Accepted, on February 25 you may start to upload project materials to your Judging Folder, following new instructions on your Project Page.

With >200 “received, waiting for review,” projects the SRC is finding common errors that slow down the process.

What you can do to speed up your review:

1. Check dates on your forms. Form 1A should list when you actually started – or plan to start – your experiment or data collection. The signature dates on other forms (1, 1B, Hold Harmless, etc.) should be prior to this date. As needed, fix and replace with a new copy in your forms folder. Only exception – 1C is filled out after experimentation.
2. Check your Bibliography. High school projects need at least 5 and middle school a minimum of 3 references relevant to the project. For a web site, specify the access date.
3. Check for Measurements.  Reviewers want to see what you plan to measure. Engineering projects in particular need quantitative engineering design criteria like speed, accuracy, distance are.

This year the Synopsys Championship will again be a virtual event. The SCVSEFA board of directors based its decision on the uncertainty regarding COVID-19 variants, the difficulty meeting local and County health requirements, and a concern for the health of all involved. Details about preparing for virtual judging will appear soon on the web site and on the Project Page for each project.

Please register to be a Category Judge for the 2022 Virtual Synopsys Championship Science & Engineering Fair, to be held online from 12:30 PM to 6 PM on March 10, 2022. We need and welcome judges in all fields of study.

We are looking for scientists, computer scientists, engineers and others who enjoy talking to enthusiastic young people about scientific inquiry and engineering challenges. Category Judges should have at least a Bachelor’s degree in a technical field or in education (with a concentration in a technical field). See the Category Judging page for details.

Project reviews are ongoing. Some of our SRC volunteers will take a break during the holidays, so response time to your questions may be a bit slower than usual. Thank you in advance for your patience.

• Newly-submitted applications will appear as “Received” at Check Project Status after the administrators check for all the required forms until the SRC starts a review.
• Projects that are “Pending” are in the hands of a reviewer.
• Projects which require SRC pre-approval must wait until they are “Accepted” before experimentation or data collection starts. 
• If your project status is “Incomplete,” you or your teacher/sponsor may have received email outlining what is missing or incorrect. Please respond to the email and we will answer as time permits between now and January 3.

Thank you for the last minute rush of applications! We are busy checking them in, with priority on projects that need pre-approval for safety reasons. When your application is complete (no required forms that are missing or unsigned) and checked in, you will receive an email and it will appear as “Received” when you Check Project Status. Please contact FairManager on Dec. 1 if it isn’t listed by then.

Congratulations to Praneel Anil Shah from John F. Kennedy Middle School! He is one of the top winners at Broadcom MASTERS 2021, taking the $2500 second place STEM Award in Technology with his project, Utilizing a Bioelectrochemical System with Phototrophic Bacteria to Generate Clean Water and Electricity. The Top 30 finalists competed virtually in a 4-day event that included individual and team challenges in various STEM disciplines. A virtual showcase of their projects will be available for several weeks beginning October 28.

The Synopsys Outreach Foundation has announced that the deadline to apply for materials packages in its Building STEM Classrooms Initiative is December 15, 2021. K-6 teachers may apply for teacher training grants, and all educators in Santa Clara County may apply for:

• Project boards
• Science notebooks (up to 48)
• RAFT membership (1 per teacher for first 300 applicants)
• RAFT STEM project kits (up to 35 kits for first 200 applicants)
• New teacher stipend ($100 for first 150 applicants)
• Apply for SJSU college students to lead an engineering workshop at your school! Materials and inspiration provided free of cost

Applications will be accepted until December 15th here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeN7P0ZoOSx7mGzGz8J5Ht3pHD5LoapqYPPZVOhTL5nE6B42w/viewform