The tradition continues! This year, the Pittsburgh Regional Science and Engineering Fair (PRSEF) will celebrate its 71st year of providing a forum by which the region's most talented and brightest middle school and highschool kids can showcase their research projects in the fields of science and technology, mathematics and engineering. This great event will be held on March 26-27 at the 2nd floor (Sky box) of Heinz Field.

  This event is organized by  Carnegie Science Center and has enjoyed very strong support and media coverage throughout the years. This event has had great success and has been consistently been sponsored by some of Fortune's magazine  top 100 companies such as IBM, US Steel, Alcoa, Bayer and FedEx and by small regional biotech companies, foundations, universities and non-profit organizations.  Indeed, these companies are investing in our children's' future by providing up to $750,000 in cash prizes, scholarships, and trips made possible. 

   Indeed, it is thanks to the generous contributions of these companies, the tireless around-the-clock organizational efforts of administrators and volunteers that make this important regional attraction a marquee event each year. Overall, the purpose of this event is to feed and nurture a prospective generation of talented scientists with positive feedback on how to design, implement, present and showcase their research projects. Lastly, a second objective of this event is to serve as a pipeline by which talented  students can eventually compete at state and national science fair competitions in their respective categories.

   PRSEF has attracted students in grades 6-12 (middle school and highschool) from all over the Western Pennsylvania region and includes three counties in West Virginia.  This event highlights the  research posters of students that are categorized under ten different disciplines including Earth sciences, life sciences, microbiology, robotics, chemistry, biology and even medicine!   This event brings many unexpected surprises as the event has seen some very high profile and ambitious science fair projects such as the construction of miniature robots and the design of genetic algorithms that enhances the search for DNA sequences.

   Given that this regional conference is a prestigious event, the process for judging and evaluating scientific posters is somewhat complicated and strict (it takes about 6 hours and has three scoring systems) but highly rewarding at the same time.  For this reason,  PRSEF are always in need of highly motivated and qualified  volunteers to participate as category, affiliate, scholarship  or sponsor judges. At a personal level, volunteering for this event as a judge is a highly rewarding and positive service learning experience that can be included in one's curriculum vitae or resume while giving back to the community at the same time. More importantly, this event enables scientists and teachers to connect and network with students and regional sponsors.

   Interested in participating as a judge or volunteer? There is still time to register; only the computer science and robotic judge categories have been closed. If you have some level of training in a respective scientific field and are interested in volunteering to  encourage, motivate and mentor a young prospective "scientist",  you can register as a judge at the following link:

http://www.scitechfestival.com/mainsf_judges_req.asp

For more general or contact information about this event, click on the following links:

http://www.scitechfestival.com/mainsf_over.asp

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