Congratulations to the 2021 Synopsys Championship Winners

SCVSEFA announced the 2021 Synopsys Championship winners on the web site on March 27, including the students who qualified for CSEF and Broadcom MASTERS nominees.

CSEF has new procedures for the 2021 virtual California Science & Engineering Fair. CSEF requires an official SRC signature on your SCVSEFA application form(s). This applies to Form 1B for all students, and Forms 4 and 6A if they were needed.  We are working to have the forms scanned and uploaded to your Forms Folders by April 1. Contact FairManager@science-fair.org if you have questions.
CSEF posted the list of qualified students from the Synopsys Championship on the web page for all affiliated fairs on March 24. They have also individually sent each student an email invitation to submit their CSEF application through a special URL crafted just for the students. If you’re named on the list but have not received an invitation, check your spam folder and other email accounts, but then email CSEF@usc.edu to request a new invitation – perhaps to a different email address – as soon as possible.
Follow CSEF instructions to begin your application by the March 29th deadline. The project presentation materials and all forms are due by April 4th.

Congratulations to Akhilesh Varadan Balasingam, Eshani Jha, Anushka Sanyal and Claire Tang, who all participated in the 2020 Synopsys Championship, and especially to Eshani Jha, who won the 3rd place Regeneron STS award for her project on effective, inexpensive water filtration using biowaste material. Forty finalists, including nine students from California, participated in the finals week competition of Regeneron STS, which is the nation’s oldest science and mathematics competition for high school seniors. The competition was virtual this year, culminating in a virtual public forum on March 14th (register to view through March 31) and a formal awards gala on March 17th.

Winners will be posted here when the results have been finalized. Meanwhile, congratulations to the participants and many thanks to the volunteers and sponsors who made the Virtual 2021 Synopsys Championship possible.

Students should do a final check of their Judging Folders before the Category judges start to review them. (1) Don’t use subfolders. (2) Upload videos to YouTube; include the link in your presentation and/or on a separate document with your project code, title and name(s). (3) Use PDF documents and eliminate duplicates in other formats. (4) The Project Abstract should include your project code, title, name(s) and the link (those don’t count against the 250-word limit). (5) File names should include the project code. (6) Form 1C for RRI projects and Form 7 for Continuation projects should be included, but no other forms should be copied over from your Application Folder.

Applications are now being accepted for the Society for Science Advocate Program. This program provides a stipend, training, and year-round support to teachers and mentors who help underrepresented students enter STEM research competitions. The Student/Mentor Connection Grant provides $500 – $750 to connect underserved students with a scientist mentor. Applications are due March 5th.

Please request changes to a project title, field of study, etc. – or to withdraw from science fair – by midnight on Wednesday, Feb. 24. Then the database will close, meta-information will be locked, and judging assignments will begin. (You’ll upload project materials to a new Judging Folder beginning Feb. 26.)

• Check Project Status with the button on the home page. After Feb. 24 any Incomplete project will move to FTQ (Fail to Qualify).
• Is the Field of Study accurate? and the category (RRI vs non-RRI)? 
• Is the title correct, are student names spelled correctly, and is the right person listed as official sponsor?
• If the project is Incomplete, upload whatever information has been requested to your Forms Folder. Inform the person who made the request by email with your project code in the subject line.
• If you need to withdraw, send email to SRC or the Fair Administrators via the contact page. 

If you have a software engineering project in the “Received pile” you
can facilitate SRC review by making sure the following are included:

• Research plan that uses the engineering project format
• A problem and a goal. Quantitative measurements (e.g. actual speed not
  faster)
• A flow chart
• Bibliography in MLA format.  

Thank you.

Project Material Instructions for the 2021 Virtual Synopsys Championship are available for the PDFs (and optional videos) that students will upload to their Judging Folders for review by the judges before the web conferences on March 11th. Individual Judging Folders will be made available – via everyone’s individual Project Page – in February, probably on the 26th.
There is also a Instructions web page.

Thank you for your patience as the Scientific Review Committee makes its way through 700+ applications using the new system of digital folders. It will take a while to finish this number of projects, including email to students if anything is incomplete or needs attention. Please watch your inbox for questions from the SRC.

If you submitted an application, it should appear under your sponsor’s name on the Project Status Page. Please email fairmanager@science-fair.org if it’s missing.