Feb 23rd: Last Day to change title/category/field/withdraw

Please request changes to your project title, field of study, etc. – or to withdraw from science fair – by midnight on Friday, 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.

Regeneron Science Talent Search has announced the 2024 Regeneron STS Scholars, who are the Top 300 entrants in this prestigious pre-college competition. 40 students from California have been honored, including 16 students from Santa Clara County schools and 8 students who competed in the 2023 Synopsys Championship. Congratulations to them and especially to Zeyneb N. Kaya from Saratoga High School and Michelle Wei from The Harker School, who are two of the 40 Finalists invited to Washington, D.C., in March to participate in final judging, display their work to the public, meet with notable scientists and compete for awards.

To see if your application is Accepted, please click Check Project Status on this page. Follow a link to the page for your teacher/sponsor. If your application is “Received,” it is waiting for review by the SRC. If it is “Incomplete,” it needs more information or additional form(s) and you will have received an email from the SRC reviewer. If you haven’t received an email about what’s missing, contact Fair Administration via the Contact page and include your 3-character Project Code and/or your 8-character Project Number. If you haven’t received a Project Number from the Fair Administration please make sure you have followed through with Step 5 (Pay & Submit) before reaching out to Fair Administration.

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 1.

Category Judge registration is now open for the 2024 Synopsys Championship Science & Engineering Fair on March 14, 2024! Category Judges must be present in person from 12:00 PM to 6:00 PM in South Hall, San Jose Convention Center. Both returning and new judges must register here.

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.

If your project needs pre-approval by the Scientific Review Committee, be sure to apply and PAY with all your Required Forms by 11:59pm on November 21st. (What’s most frequently missing? The research plan and/or your payment)

Pre-approval is required for projects that involve:

• humans (surveys, questionnaires, testing of engineering prototypes and apps)
• vertebrate animals (everything from fish to your pet dog, cat or goat),
• potentially hazardous biological agents (bacteria and fungi), rDNA, human or vertebrate animal tissue,
• hazardous chemicals, activities and devices

Pre-approval is also required for continuation projects that build on your earlier science fair project.

*Students may not culture bacteria and fungi (grow on agar plates or in flasks containing media) at home.

Pre-approval projects often need one or more Additional Forms. Check the ISEF Rules Wizard and watch for an email from your SRC reviewer about any missing form(s) or with questions about your project.  You may not start work (experimentation) until your project is approved.

Please submit applications that require pre-approval as soon as possible. Projects that require pre-approval often need extra forms, especially projects involving humans. Submitting at the FINAL deadline (Nov 21) may not give us enough time to resolve issues and receive all the necessary forms.

If you have completed all your forms and have not heard from us yet than please make sure you have completed Step 5 (Pay & Submit). We can not review your application until it has been paid. We see many applications in the pipeline and look forward to receiving them soon!

Congratulations to Shanya Gill, 12, from San Jose, CA! She is the top winner at Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge, taking the $25,000 ASCEND (Aspiring Scientists Cultivating Aspiring New Discoveries) Award, for her project designing a fire detection system as well as her leadership, collaboration and critical thinking skills.

Congratulations to Adyant Bhavsar, 13, from San Jose, who won the $10,000 Lemelson Award for Invention, awarded by The Lemelson Foundation to a young inventor creating promising product-based solutions to real-world problems. Adyant created a low-cost, eco-friendly version of a triboelectric nanogenerator. This device generates electricity from the mechanical energy of two touching objects when they separate.

The Top 30 finalists competed 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 November 2.

A second Teacher Workshop specifically geared to help teachers fill out the Synopsys Championship paperwork will be held virtually on Thursday, Nov 2nd 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. 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 please Contact us ahead of time with any questions you would like answered before joining the session.

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 8.

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.