Category Judge Registration is OPEN

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.

A Teacher Workshop specifically geared to help teachers fill out the Synopsys Championship paperwork will be held In-Person on Wednesday, Oct 25 from 4:30-5:30pm in Santa Clara, CA. Location details will be shared with the first 35 teachers who register for the workshop. Email fairmanager@science-fair.org to register.

It is strongly recommended for teachers who are new or relatively new 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 (https://www.societyforscience.org/isef/international-rules/) BEFORE joining the session.

The application will remain open until November 13, 2023 at 11:59 pm (Pacific Time)

This professional development program for high school teachers is completely free thanks to funding from Regeneron and Carl Zeiss Microscopy. Over the past 5 years, individual teachers, groups of teachers and Science Fair Directors have applied, been accepted, and benefitted from this very customized ASRT program.

If one or more of the “Top 10 mistakes teachers make….” have impacted you, or the high school teachers in your region, when guiding your students through planning, working on, and presenting STEM Research projects, you/they should consider applying for the free, customized, in-person, Advancing STEM Research Teaching Program.

Link to apply for High School Teachers:  https://forms.gle/dzMXJNMhbVXbQ73e7

Go to the Application Instructions page to get started. Online registration must be completed in one sitting, so gather all the information before you begin: project title and category, sponsor contact information, and student/parent info for each team member.

Reminder: SRC pre-approval is required for projects that involve hazardous chemicals, activities, and devices or regulated substances. It is also required for projects that will test a device or software app on human subjects or those that ask any questions of people invoked with a project (surveys, etc.). If you need SRC/IRB pre-approval you MUST get your application in before November 21, 2023.

Congratulations to Inika Adapala from Stratford Middle School, Sharanya Chudgar from Challenger School-Shawnee, Venice Parnell from The Harker School and Claire Xu from The Harker School who are among the Top 30 Thermo Fisher JIC finalists. See full press release. They are 4 of seventeen students from the Synopsys Championship who were among the Top 300 semi-finalists in the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge. More than 1800 middle school students from across the United States participated in the 2023 competition. Each one of these Top 30 students received a $500 award. The 30 Finalists will compete October 28- Nov 2 by participating in team challenges in addition to being judged on their science research projects.