Judges/Volunteers needed for the Austin Energy Regional Science Festival, February 22-25, 2023 Science Fest is a competition for students from 23 school districts as well as private, charter and home schools in 12 counties who are advancing from their local schools. Junior (middle school) Division and Senior (high school) Division students submit their projects in one of 18 scientific categories, covering both Life and Physical Sciences as well as Math and Engineering. Judging is competitive and the top two winners in each category from both divisions advance to the state fair at Texas A&M in College Station. The overall top six projects in the Senior Division, called "Best of Fair", advance directly to the international competition. Because judging is competitive, we need subject matter experts to evaluate the projects. About 7-8 projects are assigned to each group of judges (typically consisting of 3-5 people). After a group has interviewed their assigned students, team members discuss the merit of each project and jointly determine the ranking. Seniors are judged in the morning, Juniors in the afternoon. It is a 2-4 hour commitment, depending on the amount of students in each category. (The Junior Division Chemistry, Engineering, and Physics categories tend to be rather large, for example, and have to be done in two rounds.) We offer orientation sessions in the weeks leading up to the fair. Judging for next year's Junior/Senior fair will take place on Thursday, Feb 23, 2023 at the Palmer Event Center. Students will register and set up their projects on Wednesday, Feb 22, and projects will be available for previewing that night without students present. Links to the abstracts will be made available the week-end prior to the fair. Elementary students are judged on Saturday, Feb 25, 2023; judging is not competitive and every project receives either a 1st, 2nd or 3rd place ribbon. We also need general volunteers from Wednesday, Feb 22, to Saturday, Feb 25, to help with registration, project set-up, monitoring the students’ well-being and assisting with the awards ceremonies. To register as either a judge or a volunteer please go to http://www.sciencefest.org/volunteers and click on the Judges Registration Form; you will be asked for your choice of division (you can select one or more) and, in the JR/SR division, your choice of categories in which to judge. You can select up to three, in the order of preference.