Have you ever wondered what types of projects tend to win science fairs?

Or are you looking for an innovative and attention-grabbing idea for your next science fair entry?

From exploring cutting-edge technologies to uncovering novel solutions for global challenges, science fairs will provide you a platform to pursue and share your scientific findings.

Historically, science fair winners have spanned a wide range of disciplines.

Many of these projects not only demonstrate a deep understanding of scientific concepts but also offer practical solutions.

In this post I will examine ideas that have been successful in the past to provide inspiration.

Science Fair Information The International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) is the largest pre-college science competitions, drawing thousands of the world’s most talented young scientists from over 80 countries.

At ISEF, you will present cutting-edge research across various scientific disciplines, vying for scholarships, internships, and grand awards.

The fair not only showcases your achievements but also promotes global scientific collaboration and networking, providing a platform to engage with experts and explore future scientific careers.

Getting to ISEF is a long journey that begins at local and regional science fairs.

Success at these levels eventually leads to qualification for ISEF.

Since it is such a difficult achievement, it looks very impressive on applications.

It demonstrates that you are among the best in the world for your research.

There are also other science fairs that you could participate in, but I thought I would make mention of ISEF since it is the largest and most competitive.

Past Projects Synthetic DNA Engineering With ICOR Rishab Jain‘s project delves into the field of synthetic biology, focusing on improving protein production in E. coli, vital for vaccine development.

The core of his work is codon optimization, which involves selecting the best DNA sequences to enhance protein synthesis.

Traditional methods often overlook cellular dynamics, leading to inefficiencies.

Jain introduced ICOR, a tool that applies a recurrent neural network (RNN) with a bidirectional long short-term memory (LSTM) architecture, analyzing a dataset of high-expression E. coli genes.

This approach allows for a nuanced optimization of DNA sequences, aligning more closely with the cellular environment and improving protein production.

ICOR’s effectiveness was demonstrated through rigorous testing against standard methods, showing significant advancements in protein expression efficiency.

This breakthrough offers a sophisticated strategy for enhancing recombinant protein production, with broad implications for biotechnology and vaccine development.

Materials and Requirements: Coding knowledge, computational resources (high-performance computing system capable of handling large datasets), specialized software for implementing models, comprehensive genomic datasets, statistical and data analysis software Getting Started: To begin a project like this, first solidify your foundational knowledge in bioinformatics and machine learning.

Then, acquire any needed computational tools and genomic data.

Develop a project plan that outlines your approach, ensuring you include stages for model training, testing, and validation.

As you progress, continuously refine your model design based on feedback and results, and prepare to document and present your findings!

Award: Regeneron Young Scientist Award (i. e.

TOP 3, winning $50,000!) at ISEF 2022 BIO-PLEX: An Innovative Biocomputational Approach In 2022, as the world was still grappling with the aftermath of COVID-19, Mpox emerged as a new threat with increased infectivity, leading to 30,000 cases in a short span.

This resurgence raised urgent questions about the changes in the virus that enhanced its infectivity and how these changes might impact drug efficacy.

To understand why Mpox was spreading so fast and if it would affect medication effectiveness, Saathvik Kannan created BIO-PLEX, a computer tool that helps study the virus’s structure and mutations.

BIO-PLEX showed how parts of the virus, especially two changes in its DNA-copying protein, might make Mpox spread easier and impact how well treatments work.

This project helps us learn more about Mpox and shows how computers can quickly help study diseases.

Materials and Requirements: High-performance computing resources, deep learning software and libraries, homology modeling tools, Python experience, virus genetic data, databases for protein structures and mutations, software for mutation profiling and analysis Getting Started: Gain a solid understanding of computational biology and the specific virus you are studying.

Learn about deep learning and homology modeling techniques, as these are crucial for analyzing and predicting protein structures from genetic data.

Become proficient in Python, gather all necessary genetic data, familiarize yourself with the relevant computational tools and databases.

With this foundation, you can begin to apply your skills to analyze the virus’s structure and mutations, aiming to uncover insights into its increased infectivity and potential resistance to treatments.

Award: Regeneron Young Scientist Award ($50,000) at ISEF 2023 Self-Supervised 3D Human Motion Reconstruction Michelle Hua‘s project proposes a novel approach for reconstructing 3D human shape and motion from monocular video, addressing the challenges of existing methods that rely on large training datasets and suffer from performance issues.

Her method, called geometric consistency-based self-supervised neural network (GC-SSN), utilizes geometric representations based on joints and silhouettes extracted from video frames.

By enforcing consistent alignment between reconstructed 3D models and extracted features, GC-SSN achieves high accuracy without manual annotations or ground truth data.

This self-supervised approach improves domain adaptation and outperforms current state-of-the-art algorithms, offering promising advancements for applications like 3D broadcasting, virtual reality, sports analysis, and telepresence.

Materials and Requirements: Solid foundation in coding/working with computer software, monocular video footage, computer with sufficient processing power, image processing software, machine learning framework, training data (optional), geometric modeling libraries Getting Started: It’s essential to have a grasp of fundamental concepts in image processing and machine learning.

Learn the techniques for extracting and analyzing human motion from video data, and understand the principles behind geometric modeling.

Additionally, explore existing research and methodologies in the field to gain insights into potential approaches and challenges!

With this knowledge foundation, you’ll be well-equipped to delve into the specifics of your project and start experimenting with different techniques and tools.

Award: First Place: George D.

Yancopoulos Innovator Award ($75,000) at ISEF 2021 An Important Note You shouldn’t design your project to be the same as the ones that came before it.

The purpose of research is to make original contributions to the scientific world.

Use these ideas to start your own brainstorming.

You are likely someone who is driven to solve many issues in the world, so use these competitions as a platform to do so.

Use that drive to create a valuable project and your chances of winning will skyrocket Conclusions Take a look at Rishab’s STEM student guide, which is available to anyone completely for free.

This has a lot of information that will help you create the most effective science fair project as well as other opportunities such as competitions and research programs.

Also watch his YouTube playlist that will teach you how to do research.