When the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) took place this year, there was no in-person congregation in lively exhibit halls and award ceremonies. Due to the pandemic, the “Olympics of STEM fairs” had to be held virtually for the first time in its 70-year history. With a full year to prepare, ISEF 2021 was a major step up from the event that had occurred in 2020, when the competition element of the fair had to be canceled.

Engineering.com had the opportunity to speak with the Society for Science’s tech team, who worked passionately to put together a virtual ISEF experience that would still be enjoyable for all participants involved. The tech team present for the interview comprised:

• James Moore: Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
• Pratham Patkar: IT Director
• Naveed Khan: Project Manager

“[Fair management] is an end-to-end process, which is always challenging, always fun,” said Patkar. “We’re definitely cross-functional teams who work as a single unit. I feel like departments sort of melt away at ISEF and everyone just does what needs to get done.”

ISEF 2021’s Virtual Platforms

The Society for Science leveraged three platforms for hosting ISEF 2021: Event Farm, zFairs and ProjectBoard.

Event Farm served as an event engagement solution that allowed students to interact in groups as well as one-on-one.

“Kids created avatars of themselves, and they were able to move around and communicate on the platform with each other,” described Moore. “They didn’t have to type; they were able to talk and have their voices be heard. It allowed participants from around the world to be in this one place at one time. It was really great for them to have that experience of still having an engagement bond.”

Students could dance together at virtual parties, take boat rides, visit the beach, and much more. They were also able to showcase their projects on Event Farm and speak to sponsors who visited the platform. They could explain their projects to other participants at virtual booths, and engage in a way that would otherwise not have been possible. The platform could even be customized to accommodate different countries.

zFairs was used for the judging component of ISEF.

“We spent about three or four months customizing the system to cater to very diverse audiences,” said Patkar. “One of the biggest challenges was simplifying it—making it feature-rich, but at the same time limiting options for each set of audiences in a way where you really should not be able to do anything wrong, and your journey to the interview should be pretty straightforward.”

The platform implemented custom features such as the ability to record a session as well as operate a stopwatch in the interview room. Custom roles were created for Special Awards judges to schedule around Grand Awards judging. zFairs also expanded its platform’s infrastructure to be able to accommodate 200+ interview rooms, with as many as eight people in each interview room at any given time.

ProjectBoard was utilized for many different aspects of the ISEF experience. (Full disclosure: ProjectBoard is developed and owned by engineering.com.) Finalists’ research projects were showcased in the Finalist Exbibit Hall, which granted visitors 24/7 access to projects along with the ability to provide feedback within a collaborative environment. The STEM Career Hall and Sponsors pages supplied links to the fair’s sponsors and partners. A college fair presented detailed information for hundreds of educational entities, while the STEM Experiential Hall provided resources for various professional organizations across numerous disciplines. The Auditorium page displayed videos of ceremonies, panel discussions and more, and the ISEF Store linked participants to limited edition ISEF t-shirts.

“With ProjectBoard, there was the facility for students to be able to create their own projects and load their own materials,” said Khan. “We didn’t have to do all that for them, which is something we’ve had to do before. Even with the system we used previously, we could’ve worked it out where they could have done it, but we felt ProjectBoard was more intuitive.”

Sponsors and college fairs could create projects as well. Students could present their projects in virtual booths.

“ProjectBoard was also used for judging,” continued Khan. “Each project had its own unique URL, which we pushed over to zFairs. That was a big hit even before judging started, as an ability to preview the material.”

Narrowing down to the final three platforms was a long process for the Society for Science’s tech team.

“At first, we were probably looking for an all-inclusive solution,” said Khan. “Something that could handle judging and the interactions and the public display. As we started to go along, we found that there wasn’t anything that would be able to pull off all these things perfectly—so we made the decision to split the activities and find platforms that were already on those paths, then take them up to what we needed and make them connect in a way that made sense.”

In addition to bandwidth-related issues, one main concern was the volume of projects that would be displayed.

“Housing 1500 projects is not an easy thing to do,” said Moore. “We had to eliminate a lot of systems because they couldn’t handle our capacity. Our judging is also different than a lot of other judging systems and processes that other fairs have. So we factored in what we do on-site, and tried to create that in a virtual way without losing too much.”

“Once we had eliminated the out-of-the-box solutions, it came down to identifying what features we definitely needed,” added Patkar. “Between our stakeholders internally, everyone has a wish list, so we had to narrow down to what was absolutely required versus what was good to have. And then, we started exploring all the platforms. One of the things that steered us towards ProjectBoard was that they had done Youth Science Canada. Their flair for science fairs resonated very well with us, along with their willingness to customize their existing application to a point where it essentially fulfilled almost everything that we asked for. The biggest difference was the 3D designs that we needed implemented, like the lobby and the virtual 3D kind of experience. That was something they were pretty confident they would be able to implement—and they were.”

“Both ProjectBoard and zFairs wanted to work with us,” agreed Khan. “Their passion for youth STEM was clear from the beginning, as opposed to a lot of bigger out-of-the-box solutions that are great platforms, but we’re a minnow to them. These people wanted to work with us; they cared, and that came across throughout the process.”

ISEF 2021’s Event Success

Based on a survey that finalists completed after the fair, participants had a highly positive experience with the platforms. Compared to last year’s event, which saw 18,000 people come through the 6Connex platform, this year’s platforms have logged over 100,000 hits—and counting.

“There’s a huge difference in attendees on-site versus virtual,” said Moore. “We average a total of about 10,000 attendees and visitors on-site. Our numbers of over 100,000 show that the virtual event is more open to the world and there’s interest out there. It looks like something that we probably will be doing in the future because the engagement is much higher than what we actually expected this year, compared to last year. It’s definitely exceeded expectations.”

“I think the added engagement that ProjectBoard and Event Farm facilitated, provided a sense of community that participants often get on-site, and which is one of the most valuable parts of the entire experience,” reflected Patkar. “We weren’t able to bring that to our audiences in 2020.”

The Challenges of Hosting ISEF Virtually

In addition to the challenges associated with planning one of the world’s most prestigious educational competitions, the Society for Science was simultaneously involved in the organization of multiple other programs. When it came to hosting ISEF virtually for the first time ever, the team had to face many uncertainties.

“Even in a normal year, ISEF comes with working very long hours, and we accept that,” said Khan. “We’ve worked for years to perfect the on-site flow and system. This year, we had to rebuild a lot of that from the ground up. Processes had to be recreated digitally, and many things had to be thought through—for example, regarding display and safety inspections.”

“We’ve done this process in-person for decades,” concurred Patkar. “You don’t do the same kind of risk analysis, or plan for contingencies. That was definitely challenging, because you don’t know what you don’t know. It’s something you have to keep trying to figure out—and that definitely caused a lot of sleepless nights.”

“It’s doubly challenging just in terms of the work when you’re virtual,” said Khan. “We have a very close staff where there’s a lot of comradery, and you feel that when you’re in-person. You’re fully dedicated to this, especially because usually it’s in a different city. You almost suffer together when you’re in-person in a way that’s fun, and you really miss that. At the same time, I’m very, very proud of what we were able to pull off.”

Moore’s wish list includes “over-recruiting” assistance for future virtual events.

“On-site, we have volunteers that come out, and we normally get a good number of people even from attendees,” said Moore. “It is different virtually—because if they don’t attend, you can’t even really reach out and try to get someone that quick. One of the key things for us in the future will be to overestimate as much as possible from that end.”

At the heels of the global pandemic, the Society for Science has still not come to any decisions regarding whether ISEF 2022 will be held virtually again.

To read about ISEF 2021’s finalists, check out Regeneron ISEF 2021: Behind the Scenes with Two Winners and How Canada’s Leading Students Are Inspiring Millions Through Their STEM Projects.