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EISEF 2020 took place as the COVID-19 pandemic was disrupting the United States.
We were supposed to hold our Fair on March 21; COVID-19 disrupted us like everybody else. Here’s the Fair’s actual timeline:
- March 11: SSTFI (the Iowa state science fair) announced that, “The State Science and Technology Fair of Iowa will be making arrangements to conduct portions of the fair online, while other portions will be cancelled.” Students would participate by posting a video of their presentation online for judges to watch and critique.
- March 12: We decided to follow suit.
- March 16: Iowa Governor Reynolds ordered all schools to shut down for 4 weeks to slow the spread of COVID-19. This isolated the science-fair students from their teachers and the facilities in their schools — which made it harder for them to record their presentations and upload them to the internet….
- March 17: We began to accept student presentations online.
- March 23: ISEF 2020 was cancelled entirely. Now we couldn’t reward our Senior Champions with a trip to ISEF; we had to decide on something else.
- We stopped accepting student presentations at 11:59 PM; in total we had about half as many students as in a normal year.
- March 24: We told our judges to start watching the student presentations and to submit scores for them. We had to encourage them several times over the next 3 days….
- March 26: We stopped accepting judges’ scores at 11:59 PM.
- March 28: Our Finalist Judges interviewed the Senior Finalists by video conference and picked our Senior Champions — who won’t get to go to ISEF in May….
- March 29: We closed the judging for our Sponsored Awards and announced our who would receive which awards.
- March 31?: We mailed the award prizes, checks, and certificates to the adult sponsors; they’ll distribute the awards to their students.
It was tough for us and the students to move EISEF online like this — but we all rose to the challenge.
Meet our 2020 Senior Champions.
Dasia Taylor, Iowa City | 
Meena Ramadugu, | 
Shristi Sharma, Fairfield |
We named them Champions, but we can’t give them the exciting trip to the International Science and Engineering Fair in Anaheim in May. Curse you, COVID-19!
Statistics:
- 129 students presented their 103 exhibits.
- They came from 20 schools.
- 86 judges watched and scored their presentations.
- They received 132 awards in all.
Lists:
- All the presentation and awards from the fair.
- Award recipients, sorted by award.
- Award recipients, sorted by school.
- EISEF 2020 Photo Album. (We will gradually fill this in over the next few weeks.)