Singapore Science and Engineering Fair 2008

Well all's said and done by now but in order that I don't forget this wonderful experience, I'm gonna blog it.

As you may or may not know, my project which i did last december during my A*STAR attachment period got shortlisted for SSEF this year, much to my surprise. Intially i had thought our project was too simple for them to consider, but well it did get in.

Following this was 3 weeks of hard work as we put together our poster and rehearsed our presentation. Yongjin and I spent like 3 hours deciding the format of the poter which was seriously a waste of time. Then someone suggested we print on A1 size which later proved to be a blessing in disguise.

On the day before SSEF, Tuesday 4th March, we travelled down to science centre to set up our booth, and to our horror we discovered that most teams had posters in AO size, double that of our own poster. Out of the 249 projects, only 2 others printed on A1, the rest all printed on AO size. Our poster suddenly looked puny.

Yup this was our humble poster. Compare this to the size of the poster beside us...

And around us....

So you see what i mean when I say we are disadvantaged by size. Furthermore, other teams had laptop presentations, prototypes, and models to enhance their presentation. We didn't even bring our samples, and we also forgot to print our title! So after a frantic fush to find a printer we finally got our pathetic display done.

5th March ~ Judgement Day

Today was the day the judges came to judge our projects. Each project has 3 different judges, and the time for them to arrive is from 8.15 am to 6 pm. And you have no way of knowing when they will arrive. So if you're lucky, all three judges could arrive by noon or earlier. If you're unlucky, the first judge could com as late as 5pm. which means you have to be on tenterhooks waiting for a judge who only arrives at 5pm. Which was what happened to my other research partner Shaun with his other project.

I agree that this method of judgiing is quite unfair and very subjective but life's unfair anyway....so....

Anyway we were lucky because our first judge came at 9 and our last at 1145. The first judge was a lady from IMRE(how lucky) and the second was an ang moh from NUS. Both seemed suitably impressed with our project and we thought things we looking good. But the last judge was quite skeptical and tried to point out our loopholes, so after he left we were a little demoralised. So after that it was free and easy for us, and I had a little time to camwhore...

First, I went around to visit the other AJCians booths. This year there are only 5 of us, which is pathectically small.

This is Sukrit's poster. He's also from the A*STAR prog

And Gaurav, poster also from A*STAR. I managed to get a shot of him presenting..

And Claudia, from NRP. Theres one more, Willie, but unfortunately he's not photogenic haha...

6th March~Public Exhibition and Results

Okay so today basically was a slack day. We only had to present our project for the public who came and wait for the announcement of results around 3pm. The whole Annexe was quite packed with students and it was really quite a colourful atmosphere so i took some more photos..


The results was released around 3pm, and they did it excruciatingly slow. The officials went around pasting small pieces of foam which either read Merit, Bronze, Silver or Gold. They did Merit first and They took 15 minutes.....and they passed our booth by.

Then they did bronze, and still they passed our booth by. I had already given up hope on winning anything. By now, virtually 75% of the people present were tailing behind the officials and photographers as they snaked their way through the booths

The officials did not say anything, they merely looked for the right project and then pasted the award next to the code number, as this guy is demonstrating. Photographers then snapped away...

And so did I. I was naturally anxious to see if they would stop at my booth, so i just hung around there waiting.

When the officials finally reached my booth, I really couldn't believe it when one of them reached out and planted a Silver award beside our project code. It was just so unexpected that I let out a whoop of joy....SILVER.....finally something for 1 month of hard work...Thank God...

I have a feeling one reason why we won was because our poster was small, so the judges could see everything at eye level, which made it easier for us to hold their attention and connect with them without bombarding them with gaudy designs or technical jargon..The faces of the Victors. Shaun's on the left, and YJ's in the middle.And the coveted SILVER award...

So finally it was time to clear up. Some left that day elated, some were quite disappointed. Understandably, as some projects spoke of months of Hard work and some projects were done over one year. The resulting strain of not winning took its toll. i did catch a glimpse of an NJC girl in tears being comforted by a schoolmate (which is not really flattering if you are still in a blazer)

Well, this year saw a total of 249 projects, out of which 14 won gold and 21 won silver. So being in the top 14% of the shortlisted participants is pretty good i guess. Im totally satisfied with the results. As for the others in AJC, Willies Project won a Bronze. the rest didn't win anything but still getting shortlisted is already an achievement in itself.

Below's the list of all the Gold and Silver winners. Mines highlighted in green

SSEF Award Winners 2008
SSEF 2008 Gold Award
Project ID
Title
BC26
An Investivative study into the production, extraction, and pesticidal properties of glycoalkaloids in Solanum tuberosum
CH27
Iron Catalyst of Polymeric Schiff bases for Ethylene Polymerization
CM28
Transcription Factor Binding Sites in Mammalian Genomic Repeats
EB03
Synthesis of Mesoporous Carbon Nanofibers
EB43
Synthesis and Characterization of Gold Nanotubes
EB52
Dynamic Materials Testing
EB62
Nanofabrication with Focused Sunlight
EB81
GaN-based LEDs On Silicon-on-Insulator Substrate
EE24
Transcritical CO2 Heat Pumps - Improving Efficiency and Exploring Applications
MB01
Bacterial Resistance to Dettol
MH20
Development of a 3D in vitro breast cancer model using thixotropic PEG-Silica gel
MS01
Enigmatic "Bi-Circular" Property of Triangles - Wang Tong Theory
PA10
Analysis of Colloidal Crystals and Its Inverse Structure
PA23
Magnetic Anisotropy in Epitaxial Cobalt Films *Results are in alphabetical order based on project ID

SSEF 2008 Silver Award
Project ID
Title
AS05
Living in the filth of juices: The chemistry behind the life of pitcher spiders
BC11
Crystal structure determination and characterization of Trypanosoma brucei PIN1
BS03
Building a Responsible Public : Boycott to Solve Singapore's Haze Issues
CH06
Extraction, isolation and identification of triterpenoids from dried lingzhi (garnoderma lucidum) fruiting bodies
CH09
Development of Mesoporous Polymer Particles and their Applications
CH28
Direct asymmetric three-component Mannich reactions catalyzed by a siloxy serine organocatalyst in water
CM26
Functional Characterization of interaction between Galectin-1 and Cav1.2 Calcium Channels
EB10
Study of Water Vapour Transport Mechanism through nanostructure barrier stacks
EB15
Development and Biomimic of Synthetic Gecko Foot-hairs from Carbon Nanotubes
EB30
Hyaluronic Acid - Green Tea Catechin Conjugate and its Application in Protein Delivery
EB34
Effects of annealing on properties of nano-structured Mg composite
EB45
Response of an ostyolytic tumor to anti-osteolytic treatments using bone structural analysis
EB49
A Novel PHBV Microsphere-Gelatin Hydrogel Scaffold Composite for Liver Tissue Engineering
EB53
Synthesis and characterization of novel magnetoelectric multiferroic materials
EB60
Lifetime studies of P3HT:PCBM system for Organic Photovoltaics
EE27
Investigation and Control of Heating Plate Temperature Using Virtual Instrumentation
EE40
An Investigation on the Contemporary Current Sense Amplifier in SRAM Applications
MH29
Transport Enhancement and Improved Selectivity of Chlorin e6 polyvinylpyrrolidone on the chorioallantoic tumor model
MS02
Exploration on the Tower of Hanoi game with k pegs for k is greater than or equals to 4
MS10
Span of L(2,1)-Labelling on Graphs
PS05
Optimization of transformation and growth of Dendrobium chao praya gem (DCPG) orchid calli

Well the prizegiving ceremony will only be in April so till then, ciao!