ISEF 2011 Day 5 - Judging!

Judging day!... Actually, I've been rehearsing my presentation many, many times before this day, but I can't exactly remember when those times were so I didn't blog about it. But anyway, I felt more or less prepared so I enjoyed my breakfast at Denny's again. We found an interesting brochure on the table:

Front (click to see in more detail)

Back

What I ordered was rather healthier. I had resolved to take pictures of food, but when the mouthwatering dish arrives, recording its image becomes the least of my concerns and I only remember to take photos after a few bites.

Omelette with tomatoes, vegetables, onions, mushrooms and cheese inside as filling. Grits at the back and two slices of toast at the side.

It's quite torturing to blog about tasty food when I'm recovering from the food poisoning I got a few days ago, and I have to watch what I eat. After breakfast we proceeded to the exhibit hall for judging.

A ton of souvenirs left by various agencies ^_^

Sharp observers will notice that the color of my mouse had changed. Indeed, the night before, I had left my laptop at my exhibit for the round of judges who skim through posters at night (and leave souvenirs), and some stroke of folly made me bring my mouse back to the hotel. When I realized that I had forgotten to bring my mouse on judging day, I managed to keep my cool and contacted my supervisor, who passed me his own mouse outside the hall. Thank goodness he had one!

One floor above the entrance to the hall, there were windows like the above photo allowing judges to look into the hall from their rooms. Interestingly, a couple of judges were waving to some people in the hall and taking their photos.

The following is my judging schedule. Every finalist gets a card like this that tells us the names and allocated slots of our scheduled Grand Awards judges. Each session lasts for 15 minutes, and at the end of every session. a hall-wide announcement is made asking judges to move on to their next poster.

During Session 1, Other than the three judges on the card, some unscheduled judges interviewed me as well, including a team from the Association of Computing Machinery.

I was fascinated by the display on my left:

CS011 - Additional POV Display for Your Computer 

Dmitry Alexandrovich Kabak, 17, Junior, Polytechnical Gymnasium N6., Minsk, Belarus

Dmitry's project was about Persistence Of Vision (POV) devices. He built the following device, a rotating cylinder with three columns of LEDs (each column being red, green and blue respectively). A user draws a design in his computer program, and the cylinder spins on its vertical axis while the program causes specific LEDs to flash at the appropriate moments so the persistence of vision causes the user's design to appear. The following is a video showing the device in action (He saw my name from my lanyard while I was gawking at the device):

A small portion of Dmitry's poster

I also a took a video of a finalist juggling a few green balls (they flash in different colors on impact - free gifts from Google), and later, his mobile phone as well, but Blogger rejected the video -_-

Some people were really carefree during judging, probably owing to the long free periods between judges. During one of those free periods, I met Dr. Wulf Hofbauer, the Singapore Science and Engineering Fair (SSEF) judge sent to judge at ISEF.

The finalists all had lunch during the break (1145 - 1315), and the supervisors of Team Singapore bought lunch for its finalists. I had a sumptuous Japanese meal: rice with salmon, tempura prawns and vegetables.

In the second period, only the scheduled judges came to my booth. 

Interesting mode of transport

After the second period, there was a break (1515 - 1615) followed by a period for "Unscheduled Interviews" (1615 - 1800). Up to about 1730, my only interview was by a judge from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Society, but in the last half an hour a sudden crowd of Grand Awards judges interviewed me. I could feel that those Grand Awards judges were more high-level now, as they asked more probing and difficult questions than previous judges. Interestingly, one judge's name was "Demain". It was a real pity that they came so late, because I still had more to say when they had to leave for other interviews. While I was packing up at 1800, a final Grand Awards judge came up and interviewed me. Ironically, because the time was up, the time restriction no longer mattered and I spoke with her for very long, telling her all of the additional information about my project.

In sum, all of the judges were very nice people ("reward the best and encourage the rest") and it seemed like I did okay in impressing the 20-odd judges who interviewed me.

Finally, we could relax!!! Team Singapore went back to Hotel Figueroa to change to more casual wear. Soon after, we set off for LA's Universal Studios!

One of those photos that can prove that you've been there

Straight from the program booklet:

7:00 p.m.–Midnight   Intel ISEF Night at Universal Studios Hollywood

For one night, Universal Studios Hollywood belongs to Intel ISEF. Only Official Parties will be admitted to the park. Buses will start departures from the Convention Center at 6:00 p.m. Departures from all of the official Intel ISEF block hotels will begin at 6.:15 p.m. Guests will enjoy exclusive access to rides, including the Simpsons, Revenge of the Mummy, Jurassic Park the Ride, and Shrek 4-D. Studio tours will be running until 9:30 p.m. Concession stands will be open and will offer a variety of dining options at no charge. Guests are also welcome to visit Universal Walk, where they will find a number of shopping opportunities as well as restaurants and nightclubs. Universal Walk is open to the general public and is NOT for the exclusive use of Intel ISEF participants. All activities in Universal Walk are at the expense of the participant and not Intel

ISEF. Transportation back from the park to all block hotels will be continuous throughout the evening until midnight.

In short, ISEF Finalists and their supervisors have free admission to Universal Studios (which has been booked by Intel solely for ISEF Official Parties), free rides and free food! We all got a special lanyard:

The paper in the lanyard is actually a folded map of Universal Studios.

Surprisingly, since I'm not really in touch with movies and that kind of culture, the displays didn't really draw my attention. My supervisor and I had dinner first:

Black tray: my supervisor's meal - fried chicken and fries in a basket, a plate of noodles with sweet and sour pork, broccoli and cauliflowers. Foreground: my meal - chocolate cake underneat the kosher label, a pretzel (also kosher) on top of a "mystery package" which contains:

Rice, salmon and long beans in some nice sourish sauce. Very hot and tasty.

I brought the chocolate cake and pretzel back to the hotel and stored them in the fridge.

The lighting in the area was woefully inadequate, and I had night blindess, so it was a little hard to move around. I went on the Jurassic Park ride, which was around my tolerance level (which shows how low it is). I really liked the Simpsons Ride, because there was a solid storyline that was slowly revealing itself to us (through surrounding TV screens) even while we were queuing up for the ride. Too bad the screen was too large, and I had tunnel vision, so I couldn't catch everything.

ISEF 2011 Day 4

There wasn't much to do on Day 4, so I don't have many photos. We had breakfast at the cafe in Hotel Figueroa's lobby for the first time. To recap, here's a picture of the cafe:

See the long table next to the men in white and below the chandelier? They put many tureens, each containing a certain food item, on the table, buffet style. You walk down the aisle with your plate, collecting servings of the food, and you are charged at the counter (near the men in white) according to the amount you take. My memory is very clear for food, so starting from the back you have the following (all prices in US Dollars):

1. Trays
2. Glasses and orange juice - $0.50 a cup
3. (shallow -_-) bowls, milk and cereal (corn flakes, banana flakes, muesli) - $2 a bowl
4. Syrup and pancakes - $0.50 each
5. Scrambled eggs - $1.50 per serving (as long as you don't pile heaps they call it one serving)
6. Bacon and sausages - 3 pieces (of either) for $1.75
7. Fried potato flakes - forgot the price
8. Steamed rice - $1.50 per serving I think
9. Bun - $0.75 each
10. Cheese - expensive so I forgot the price
11. Butter - free
12. Muffins - $1.20 each

Quite a spread, and here's what I took:

Juice, 3 strips of bacon, one pancake buried under the bacon, lots of scrambled eggs + salt + pepper (yum!), lots of potatoes, ketchup, syrup, butter. Tasty!!!

Later during the day was when finalists who still had not cleared their Display and Safety checks had their last chance to fix up their projects. I rehearsed my presentation a little at my poster during that period. The scary thing was that three judges from CERN came over and interviewed me for the CERN Special Award (which I had applied for) even though judging was supposed to be tomorrow. I think I did pretty well, although you can't really predict from the judges' reactions, since they were told to "reward the best, encourage the rest", and all the judges I had were nice to me. I think it's reasonable to say that ISEF judges were like that in general.

The Excellence in Science and Technology Discussion Panel was in the afternoon. We went back to the big hall where a panel of 6 Nobel Laureates answered questions from a large audience.

In no order, the Nobel Laureates are:

• Paul Berg, Chemistry (1980)
• Michael J. Bishop, Physiology or Medicine (1989)
• Martin Chalfie, Chemistry (2008)
• Dudley Hershbach, Chemistry (1986)
• Robert H. Horvitz, Chemistry (2002)
• Douglas Osheroff, Physics (1996)
• Richard Roberts, Physiology or Medicine (1993)

Apparently, one of them was missing, and I don't know who was. Medicine and the highly related Chemistry

were strongly represented, and there was only one Physics Nobel Laureate (he might even have been the missing guy). They should have invited Fields Medalists or Economics Nobel Laureates to represent Mathematics! None of the Nobel Laureates were Asians, too.

Someone asked this question: "If you could dine with three people of your choice, who would they be and why?" Someone sitting close to me muttered, "sounds just like a college essay question." I agree, and I think a better question could have been asked instead of it since their time was very limited.

Me asking a question!

One of my favourite responses from the Nobel Laureates (I think it might have been Michael J. Bishop) went something like this: "When someone asks me what use some piece of research can be of, I ask him what the use of a newborn baby is."

ISEF 2011 Day 3

Breakfast began with all of us gathered in one hotel room and pooling food: we had bagels, cream cheese, Pringles, frozen strawberries (one of the teachers set the fridge to freezer mode by accident), bread and canned tuna.

Most of the food we ended up having

My half-eaten bagel

The texture of the frozen strawberries was like ice-cream but if only they were sweeter...

Project display set-up continued at LA Convention Center, and I finally passed all the safety checks. If you enter the exhibit and immediately look to your right, you can see one row of the Computer Science posters:

My poster is at CS009 near the middle of the picture. Two people are reading it now.

My final set-up

My project is about folding axial symmetric polyhedra, which are some kinds of 3D solids that have rotational symmetry. Last July at the Fifth International Conference on Origami in Science, Mathematics and Education, I attended Jun Mitani's lecture on folding these kinds of solids, and his models followed the target solids well except for some external protrusions. I thought of a way to hide those protrusions inside the solid instead by stacking up simpler solids that I had already derived algorithms for in previous projects. I also wrote a computer program that allows user to specify their target solid and generate its crease pattern.

Check out Jun Mitani's Flickr photostream with all his beautiful models and even a link to the program he wrote!

Of course, I was eager to check out the only other origami project in the hall, so i visited 木村さん's booth:

Her project was about investigating polyhedra that tessellate space and folding them using origami. Here's a closer shot of the huge assortment of models on her table:

Folded polyhedra from her project that tessellate space 

More polyhedra, as well as other models by other researchers in the top right corner. Starting from the orange crane, we have Koryo Miura's map fold hidden behind a large orange origami cylinder (whose design was it?) and Kaori Kuribayashi's (she was at 5OSME) origami stents.

You can also see photocopies of her abstract on the table. Every finalist had stacks of them on the table for interested visitors to take.

After visiting around, I attended a symposium titled "Talking Science", where a public speaking professional taught us good presentation skills. It was mainly about deciding on a few core messages you want to bring across and using every opportunity to guide the interviewer so you end up talking about those core messages. He got a couple of volunteers from the audience to get interviewed in the "before" state. At the end of the symposium, he interviewed them again to see their improved performance in the "after" state. I wish I got picked as a volunteer...

"Before"

Video critique of the "Before" interview

After the symposium, I visited the E-lounge, which was a huge room with a "theater corner":

Loungers watching TRON: Legacy

The rest of the room contained a large number of laptops which had internet access. The E-lounge is a place designated for finalists or official parties to use the Internet, and it's open most of the time.

On the streets of LA again, I spotted a structure that my algorithm could fold:

There was a buffet dinner before the Opening Ceremony, and I saw Ramona Flowers:

All the finalists and everyone with anything to do with ISEF were seated in this gigantic hall for the Opening Ceremony: 

The masters of ceremony throughout ISEF were big shots, which shows how high-budget the whole event was. The host of the Opening Ceremony was Chad Zdenek, "host of the G4 network's It's Effin' Science".

There was a cool performance by a drum group (?):

Seriously, the opening ceremony was like a concert. We watched a video of some well-funded experiment about water jet-packs. Too bad my camera ran out of battery right when we got to the actual testing, and too bad the video seems to large for Blogger to handle -_-

Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO of DreamWorks Animation SKG, gave a keynote speech. The most memorable part of it wasn't the speech itself, but a (roughly) 5-minute exclusive preview of the yet-to-be-released Kung Fu Panda 2.

ISEF 2011 Day 2

I didn't take many photos from Day 2, because it was mostly project set-up in the morning to the afternoon. We had breakfast at Denny's (can't recall the exact name).

A "Grand Slamwich" (toast, cheese, eggs, bacon and ham) with grits (the fried potato at the back)

I got bored while waiting for the bill so I twisted a paper napkin into this rose. It's a great model with a simple concept (twist the periphery of the napkin while holding the center) that can give beautiful results with a bit of practice.

Here's a shot of Los Angeles Convention Center's Tom Bradley Exhibit Hall, where the judging would be held.

View from the hall entrance.

The large boards in the background near the center is the HUB area, where volunteers man stations like an information booth and a booth giving stickers that allow you to take things out of the hall.

A plan of all the categories, their booths and the various languages spoken by the finalists there

We took so long to get the huge frame of my poster up that my supervisor and I actually appeared (at 0:23) in the short video montage of the "Intel ISEF 2011 Highlights":

My initial set-up (two frames hinged together at the middle)

After we put everything up on the table, we asked the ISEF officials to do a Display and Safety Check of my display. My display ran into problems because the sides of the frames extended beyond the sides of the table; the entire display had to fit within the boundaries of the table. The safety check official was very helpful, but he  immediately started giving some very scary suggestions:

Official: "Don't worry, we've sorted out many oversize projects before - let's ask someone who has actual experience in that."

The official brought another volunteer from the HUB to my display.

New official: "I don't see a problem, if we saw here and here, we can superimpose the pieces to fit them within table."

Me: "(shocked) Maybe we can just solve this just by closing the hinges a little?"

Official: "How about we remove the hinges, remove the table and stack the two frames one above the other?"

New Official: "Yeah, they're not so strict about the height restriction, so that would work."

Me: "(closing the hinges so everything fit inside the table) How about this?"

Officials: "Oh, I didn't notice that! Thanks for telling me before I destroyed your project!"

I can't remember the whole exchange, but it went something like that ;)

We visited a huge supermarket near the hotel where I bought water, chocolates (for souvenirs), bananas and two boxes of strawberries to share with my roommate. Listen on to find out what happened to the fruits XD

That night was pin exchange, where all 1543 ISEF finalists were in one hall in J W Marriot Hotel and we exchanged collar pins and badges from our countries. As the program booklet promised, there were "food, music and good times for all".

Some tables for us to have dinner and chat at

I came armed with 30 NUS High School badges and 100 pins from the Singapore Science and Engineering Fair 2011. I had a bit of dinner, during which team Singapore met a Canadian who was born in Singapore and had studied in Raffles Girls' School before she left, as well as Saaket from Ohio, who we would be run into very often during ISEF. I'd been learning Japanese for a few months so I was eager to test it out and i searched for Japanese finalists while exchanging pins. I soon ran into Morikawa Yoshito (森川 義仁), who I had no problem identifying because he was wearing "日本" on his shirt, as all the Japanese finalists turned out to be.

Me: "あんなたはにほんじんですか。" (are you Japanese?)



森川さん: "ええ、にほんじんです。" (yes, I am Japanese.)


Me: "いっしょにしゃしんをとりませんか。" (do you want to take a picture together?)


森川さん: "うまい!  うまい!" (wow, pro! - referring to my Japanese)

He may have said that but I know I'm still a beginner - see how I type all my Japanese in Hiragana :)

森川 義仁さん

Other than the Japanese with their "日本" jackets, a few other teams had special dress too, including the Koreans who wore Hanboks. The team from Argentina made a ruckus a few times:

I had nearly finished exchanging all of my pins by the end of the event. As I made my way out of the hall, I spotted another Japanese finalist and I asked her if she knew any Japanese finalist who was from Ritsumeikan Junior and Senior High School (立命館宇治中学校 ・ 高等学校), since I will be going there on an exchange program this year. Turns out she was the only finalist from that school, and she was Kimura Mari (木村 麻里), who I'd communicated with a while back. She had presented her project (also about origami) at the International Students Science Fair 2010 in Australia, and my friends from NUS High who had also participated told me about her project. I had then asked her about the details of her project through email.

On the right: 木村 麻里さん

After exiting the pin exchange hall, I managed to finish off all my pins by camping next to the escalator leading down from the hall. That meant that I had more than 100 pins (I gave some away "for free").

Back in our rooms, my room-mate Yuan Jin and I put the fruits in the fridge that came with the room and I tried some of the strawberries. They were a little sour but nice and juicy, and they were great for a snack. When I took the box out of the fridge to take more strawberries, I fumbled and half the strawberries in that box tumbled out onto the floor. To save food, I washed all of them and ate them one by one without Yuan Jin, who resolutely refused to be part of the environmentally-friendly effort.

Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) 2011 Day 1

Seems like my blog only revives during big events! I blog to record my experiences at big events so I have something to refer to when I forget parts of them. I’m at Los Angeles now, taking part in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair 2011. I couldn’t get the Internet until today...

Day 1

I took a 4-hour flight from Singapore to Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific, and I watched Shaolin (新少林寺) on the plane. The inflight lunch was great but I forgot to photograph it so all I can remember is rice with salmon and vegetables. Hong Kong International Airport was an interesting place; there were mountains all around it.

The airport had a few exhibits on Chinese culture, such as Beijing Opera and Traditional Chinese Medicine. There were high-rise buildings clearly in sight of the airport:

We didn’t spend long there and we soon transferred to our 13-hour flight to LA. Again, the food (dinner) was really good and I started taking food photos:

(From top left and clockwise) Smoked salmon with cucumber and diced potatoes in cream, TimTam chocolate bar, Haagan Dasz vanilla ice-cream, salted peanuts (appetizer before the meal arrived), orange juice, green beans, baked fish, baked potato. The bun is missing because I ate it before remembering to take this photo.

Each seat had a power socket, which impressed me a lot until I tried charging my laptop and it didn’t work. Apparently I was just unlucky because my neighbour’s power socket worked and he was charging two handphones.  I played Metal Slug 3 on my laptop with my project supervisor until the power ran out:

End of Mission 2 (yes I'm the player on the left)

It was really hard to sleep on the plane so I only managed to get a couple of hours of sleep until I left off. In the meantime I watched Green Hortet and Inglorius Basterds. In a few hours came Brunch:

Omelette with baked beans, potatoes, sausages, bacon and crossiant (read items have been eaten before the picture was taken)

I noticed a really nice pattern on the lower half of their cups:

Right before landing, the in-flight entertainment system had some problem and had to be rebooted. We found out that the system used Linux:

We landed at about 1pm in Los Angeles, and we took a bus to Figueroa Hotel. We passed by the Los Angeles Convention Center, where ISEF 2011 would be held.

We got to Hotel Figueroa, which supposedly has a Moroccan theme. We also found to our dismay that internet came at USD$5 per 24 hour period...

Team Singapore went for early registration at Los Angeles Convention Center, where we received our Finalist lanyard. If it was misplaced, we'd have to pay USD$200 to replace it!

They always miss out the second word in the first name... >.<

My supervisor and I in front of the entrance to the contest area, Tom Bradley Exhibition Hall.

As we went for dinner, we saw a few interesting sights. L.A. has mainly low-rise buildings and humongous signboards, while Singapore has high-rise buildings (think HDB) and tiny signboards. We also caught this on the streets:

So many screens showing the same scene - see if you can spot the real screens and their reflections!

We had dinner at the "Original Pantry Cafe":

Huge hunk of bread with butter - really nice :)

Coleslaw. It had black pepper in it, is that supposed to be the norm?

Fish and Chips - my order (and almost everyone else's). The portion was extremely large and all of us except one adult could finish what we ordered.

What my table looked like after we couldn't shovel down any more.

And that concludes Day 1.