by Angana Ray, University of Southern California
The 68th Annual California Science and Engineering Fair was organized at the California Science Center on April 29-30, 2019. The science fair projects covered all areas in science, technology, engineering and management (STEM). One of the recognition awards presented at the science fair, the “Biophysics Award,” was sponsored by the Biophysical Society.
The Biophysical Society reached out to members in the Los Angeles area requesting judges for the Science Fair. I was delighted when I received the request and did not hesitate to accept the invitation! My responsibility was to select the best biophysics-related project in the senior division. On the day of the science fair, I reached the venue early and completed my registration process, so I had time to quickly glance through all the projects in Biochemistry/Molecular Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Computational Systems and Analysis to get a preliminary idea of all the biophysics-related projects before interviewing the presenters. At 8:30 am sharp, the young enthusiastic presenters were standing in front of their posters, ready to impress the judges with their work. The best part of judging was talking to the students. All I had to do was introduce myself as a judge, and the students immediately went into presentation mode.
I talked to nearly 20 students and their projects were all diverse, innovative, and impressive! All the projects were nicely illustrated, accompanied with graphs. My first focus was to understand the scientific methods and then to gauge if the students had a clear understanding of their experiments and the meaning of the data. One of my favorite questions to ask was “how did you select the topic?” The answers to this were interesting and wide-ranging. “My sister has Celiac disease, so when I got the chance to work on this, I felt motivated,” answered one of the participants
Science Fairs are a great platform for students who are concerned about real-world issues. Two of the projects that stood out had practical applications. The project by Sabreen Alam from Orange County was focused on understanding the effects of mechanical pressure on collagen fiber orientation and fibroblast proliferation. The project was truly biophysical in nature as the methods involved development of a 3D printer, using confocal microscopy and bright-field microscopy, understanding of deep-level mathematics, and programming. The system studied, of course, was biologically relevant collagen fiber and fibroblast. She presented the work with vigor and excitement, and on top of that, the science part was perfect. She could answer all my questions and connected the results to daily life applications wherever possible. In close competition was another project, by Asna Tabassum from San Bernardino County, that looked into futuristic personalized medicine. The project was well-drafted and executed, but was completely computational. It was tough selecting the awardee between these two and I was happy to hear that an honorable mention certificate could be given. At the Science Fair, I could only give one student the certificate which was to Sabreen but I wrote to the Biophysical Society and requested if they could send a runner up certificate to Asna. In this way, both the presenters were recognized for their works and I hope they will be able to give their work a proper shape and publish them.
I was happy to have the experience of being a Science Fair judge for the Biophysical Society. I saw no reason to say no to the request for a judge, and I am glad that I quickly agreed and had the chance to talk to these students about their research. It was a fun day!
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To add yourself to the list of members who may be contacted if there is a Science Fair in your area, be sure to opt in. Visit your myBPS account and answer “Yes” to the question “Interested in being a judge at a BPS sponsored Science Fair?”