Project Categories
When creating your project in MySciFair, you will need to select a category for your project. Please choose the category that best matches your project. The category you select will determine the judges you speak with during your interview.
This category includes:
- all aspects of animals (including humans) and animal life
- animal life cycles
- animal interactions with one another or with their environment
- cognitions (thought processes)
- emotions
- behavior
- learning of humans and animals.
This category includes:
- Studies of intra- and intercellular pathways
- Involves understanding life and cellular processes specifically at the molecular level.
- Antimicrobial and antibiotic substances
This category includes:
- Studying the chemical basis of processes occurring in living organisms, including the processes by which these substances enter into, or are formed in, the organisms and react with each other and the environment.
- The science of the composition, structure, properties, and reactions of matter.
- The study of the separation, identification, and quantification of the chemical components of materials.
This category includes:
- development and advancement of computer science and mathematics as they relate to biological systems.
- use of machine intelligence is paramount to reducing the reliance on human intervention
- development of software, information processes or methodologies to demonstrate, analyze, or control a process/solution.
- measurement, properties, and relationships of quantities and sets, using numbers and symbols, geometry, and various abstract constructs or structures.
- involving electrical systems in which information is conveyed via signals and waveforms for purposes of enhancing communications, control, and/or sensing.
This category includes:
- Analysis of existing conditions of the environment and developing innovative solutions that respond to changing environmental conditions.
- scientific and mathematical principles involving the production and/or storage of energy to practical ends such as the design, manufacture, and operation of efficient and economical machines and systems.
- Studies of the environment and its effect on organisms/systems, including investigations of biological processes such as growth and life span, as well as studies of Earth systems and their evolution.
- Earth’s structural features as related to plate structure, plate movement, volcanism, etc.
This category includes:
- Science and engineering solutions that involve dynamic or static movement or structure.
- Integration of materials in systems, devices, and components that rely on their unique and specific properties.
- Materials are categorized across length scales
- Multi-scale modeling and computations for process-structure and structure-property correlations
This category includes:
- Issues of human health and disease
- Studies on the diagnosis, treatment, prevention
- Epidemiology of disease
- Other damage to the human body or mental systems
- Application of engineering principles and design concepts to medicine and biology for healthcare purposes, including diagnosis, monitoring, and therapy.
- Improvement of human health and longevity by translating novel discoveries in the biomedical sciences into effective activities and tools for clinical and public health use.
This category includes:
- Study of matter and energy and of interactions between the two.
- Study of anything in the universe beyond the Earth.
- The study of atoms, simple molecules, electrons, light, and their interactions
- The study of physical properties of light and lasers
- The study of space, the universe as a whole, including its origins and evolution
- The physical properties of objects in space and computational astronomy
- The study of the physics of biological processes and systems
- The study of the properties of solids and liquids.
This category includes:
- All studies of plants and how they live, including structure, physiology, development, and classification.
This category includes:
- The use of technology to ignite new concepts, visualization tools and/or media to enhance our enjoyment of the arts.
Rubrics and Scoring Guidelines
Scoring categories and criteria for the STL Science Fair Honors Divisions are based on the ISEF Grand Awards Criteria. Please note that there is no virtual option to participate in the Honors Division. Students must be present in person for the interview to be eligible for competition.
Thank you to all the teacher reviewers who have been involved in the revision of the rubrics!
Junior Honors Division
There is one round of competition in the Junior Honors Division. Participants remain at their project boards during the selected time frame and wait for judges to come to them. Participants will speak with a team of judges for between 5 and 7 minutes during the “Interview”. During this time, participants will speak about their project and answer questions from the judges. Judges will evaluate the project using the rubrics below. Unfortunately, there is no virtual option for the Honors Division. Students must be present in person for the interview to be eligible for competition.
Based on the scores from the Interview round, the top 10% of Junior Honors Division projects will be nominated for the Thermofischer Junior Innovators Challenge, and the top 10 scoring projects will advance to the Missouri State Science Fair. All awards will be announced at the STL Science Fair Awards Ceremony on March 13.
All Junior Honors Division projects will receive a purple Honors Division ribbon at the STL Science Fair.
Junior Honors – Science Rubric
Junior Honors – Maker Rubric
Senior Honors Division
There are two rounds of competition in the Senior Honors Division. Unfortunately, there is no virtual option for the Honors Division. Students must be present in person for the interview to be eligible for competition.
In Round 1, Participants remain at their project boards during the selected time frame and wait for judges to come to them. Participants will speak with a team of judges for between 5 and 7 minutes during the “Interview”. During this time, participants will speak about their project and answer questions from the judges. Judges will evaluate the project using the (R1) Interview Rubrics below.
Based on the scores from the Interview round, the top 10 scoring projects will advance to the Final Round, and the top 20 scoring projects will advance to the Missouri State Science Fair. All Senior Honors Division projects will receive a purple Honors Division ribbon at the STL Science Fair. All awards will be announced at the STL Science Fair Awards Ceremony on March 13.
In the Final Round, Participants give a 8-10min presentation to a panel of judges on their research. Participants may use their poster board, display items, and may submit a .pptx file to sciencefair@academyofsciencestl.org. Following the presentation, the panel of judges will have 5min to ask questions of the participants. Judges will evaluate each project based on the Final Round Rubric below, and following all presentations, will Caucus to determine the top three projects.
Final Round participants will be announced on March 11th between 5-6P on the website and on social media, and all Finalists will be notified by email. The Final Round will take place on March 12th from 5:30P-8:30P on the Saint Louis University campus. Unfortunately, there is no virtual option for the Honors Division. Students must be present in person for the Final Round to be eligible for consideration of ISEF bids. All awards will be announced at the STL Science Fair Awards Ceremony on March 13.
Senior Honors – Interview Science Rubric
Senior Honors – Interview Maker Rubric
Senior Honors – Final Round Judge Rubric
While the rubric is used to preliminarily score the Final Round projects, judges will decide the three ISEF bids by caucusing after the presentations. Comments from the final round may be shared with finalists; caucus notes and raw scores will not.