International Science and Engineering Fair


The Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair is an annual science fair in the United States. It is owned and administered by the Society for Science & the Public, a 501 non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C. Each May, more than 1500 students from roughly 70 countries and territories compete in the fair for scholarships, tuition grants, internships, scientific field trips and the grand prizes, including one $75,000 and two $50,000 college scholarships. All prizes together amount to over $4,070,000. Two awards ceremonies are held including: Special Awards Organization Presentation and the Grand Awards Ceremony. The International Science and Engineering Fair was founded in 1950 by Science Service and was sponsored by the Intel Corporation from 1997 to 2019. Since 2020, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals is the title sponsor for ISEF, but the event that year was cancelled and replaced with an online version due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Notable alumni

ISEF alumni include:
Contestants are selected from regional, district, and state ISEF affiliated fairs. These fairs usually encompass multiple states or entire regions of a country. The regional fair committee is responsible for managing the fair when their city hosts the event.
Individual science projects and team science projects both compete for prizes. Teams are composed of two to as many as four high school students.
The structure of the competition is as follows:
Additionally, time is set aside for students to experience the host city, with ISEF coordinating signups for various tours and activities. A significant component of the program is social, as students interact with each other during mixers and ceremonies. Throughout much of the week, various seminars are also held for students, mentors, and teachers.

Prizes and honors

ISEF also used to hold a "People's Choice Award" to allow the public to vote for its favorite entries.
Since 2001, MIT's Lincoln Laboratory has named asteroids after ISEF winners as part of the Ceres Connection.
Multiple organizations sponsor 'special awards' with their own distinct criteria. These organizations include the National Security Agency, Association for Computing Machinery, IEEE Foundation, and Patent and Trademark Office Society.

Finalist Medal

The Intel ISEF Finalist Medal is given to about 1800 students from 75 countries each year, which are participating at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, which is owned and administered by the Society for Science and the Public, a 501 non-profit organization based in Washington, DC.
Each year about 7 million students participate in different regional, district and state ISEF affiliated fairs. Some of the winners of these affiliated fairs, which exist in over 75 countries, get the chance to take part at the Intel ISEF as a finalist, and each of them is awarded the Intel ISEF Finalist Medal. In 2013 there were 1611 finalists at the Intel ISEF in Phoenix, Arizona.
The medal has a diameter of 48 mm and is golden galvanized. The obverse shows the official logo of the Intel ISEF, the reverse shows the year of participating and the location of that year's Intel ISEF.
The ribbon bar is blue with a width of 40 mm and has a golden romanic 1 in the middle.

Top Prize Winners

When Intel began sponsoring ISEF in 1997, the Grand Awards were replaced with the Intel Foundation Young Scientist Awards, awarded to the top three projects. In 2010, the top award was renamed for Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore.
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