Talking hands & training roaches

It was a week where students from all over the world exchanged ideas, compared notes and inspired each other. It was also a week where they collected pins that decorated the ID strings around their necks. National and state flags, caricatures and symbols of their cultures – it was an achievement to get as many pins as you could from fellow finalists selected from over 500 Intel-affiliated fairs held worldwide.

Intel ISEF is an intense competition for more than 900 individual and team awards, where more than a thousand judges from different fields of science and engineering select the winners. But it is also a lot of fun for these whiz kids. "It’s a grand celebration," says Carlene Ellis, Intel vice president of diversity and education.

The ISEF has been coordinated for the past 54 years by Science Service, a non-profit organization advancing the cause of science. Intel, the world’s largest chipmaker, has been sponsoring the fair for the past six years as part of its Intel Innovation in Education initiative, which is "focused on collaborating with educators to improve the quality of science and mathematics education and to help students develop the higher-level thinking skills they need to participate and succeed in a knowledge-based economy."

Excerpts from our interview with Carlene Ellis and Wendy Ramage Hawkins, Intel director of education tell us why smart kids do finish first.

How does holding Intel ISEF make good business sense for the company?

Wendy Hawkins: Intel’s approach to education generally is very much aimed at the long horizon. That’s why even in an economic downturn, our investment in education has increased rather than decreased. This is not for the short-term, like giving away a percentage of our profits and feeling good and looking good to the world. Our investment in Intel ISEF is very much about long-term strategic goals. We’re looking at creating a future workforce. We need to inspire and recognize students for doing well in math, science and technology.

When we look around the world, particularly in the United States, we see that students are presented with images showing that if you want to make money and be successful, you become an athlete, a rock star or a movie star. We want to create an environment where success in math, science and technology is seen as valuable and is recognized by society. We want to encourage students to pursue the studies that will lead to innovation, invention, and the technical skills that we need in order to thrive as a company. We need that not just in the people that we hire, but there’s an ecology of other companies around Intel – our customers and our vendors – they also need those same skills and we need them to be successful. All of those goals, some very directly connected to Intel, some indirectly, are supported by our focus on increasing math, science and technical skills of the students.

Carlene Ellis: This competition is very seriously governed and focused on students doing good research. It’s achievement-oriented. We want to build future Nobel Prize winners, we want to build future inventors. Equally important to that is the fact that what the students and their parents and teachers lucky enough to see here is the grand celebration, a phenomenal amount of fun for these students.

I was on the exhibition floor yesterday with people from the Ministry of Education in Israel and some teachers. They were blown away by the size of that floor, by the presentation of the projects, the energy, the look on the kids’ faces. I wish the world could see that in Technicolor. We want to reward the kids that worked hard to get here. The parents seeing it, they go back different. The teachers seeing it, it’s a profound experience. Each science fair administrator that walks in here says, "I’m going to do it bigger and better next year. I’m going to get more kids. We’re going to go back and do a research class in high school, even in middle school." That’s exactly what we want. Then this becomes a piece of the fabric in the education system. What Intel is focused on is recognizing the best of the best. Athletes and movie stars get recognized all the time, singers make millions. What’s the difference? These kids need the recognition. There’s the serious work side of it academically, and equally important is that we shine the light on what the students are capable of doing and raising expectations.

How much does Intel spend on ISEF?

Carlene: We spend $125 million a year on education, probably $5 million of it on ISEF.

What’s the big picture as far as the Asia Pacific participation is concerned? Do you plan to include more countries?

Wendy: We’re very enthusiastic about encouraging Intel-affiliated fairs in countries all over the world and Asia Pacific in particular where students are very enthusiastic to come here and compete. We’d like to see more affiliated fairs aligned with the program.

Carlene: Countries have to invest in a fair structure that can feed ISEF, run as an ISEF-affiliated fair and under the rules and guidelines of this competition. Not all countries are interested in doing that.

Wendy: We do not create the fairs around the world, but we’re enthusiastic in supporting them.

Intel has been hosting ISEF for six years, can you give us a sense of how the projects have evolved? Have they become more sophisticated?

Carlene: The numbers and country involvement have grown. I would say the projects have grown a great deal in sophistication. The high-end to me seems to be continually growing higher.

Do you plan to take it to the collegiate level?

Wendy: At this point no. At the university level students actually have the opportunity as part of the curriculum to do real research. They can take their research to conferences and more competitive environments.

Carlene: We’re filling a void at this level. If eight-year-old children can master very complex concepts in ballet and we have prodigy musicians at 9 and 10, my vote is to get the scientific method — how to do good research, how to solve problems — down to an early level.

What are your personal favorite projects since Intel got involved in ISEF?

Carlene: I love Ryan Patterson’s hand language glove project. He’s just a pretty normal kid that loves science and innovation. He saw the need for translation in a restaurant, which was most practical reason in the world to do it.

(Patterson’s invention is a glove that translates American Sign Language into written words that appear on a portable computer screen. The device is a golf glove fitted with a tiny circuit board and ten sensors. Patterson received a provisional patent on the device in March 2001 and applied for a full patent a year later. Patterson won more than $400,000 in scholarship money and has been featured in publications including GQ magazine and his invention was recognized as one of the top inventions of 2002 by Time magazine. Today he is a sophomore at the University of Colorado majoring in electrical and computer engineering.)

I’m extremely interested in the cockroach project here. I grew up in Florida where we have big cockroaches. It never crossed my mind that you could train cockroaches. Somebody asked me, "Do they have brains?" I don’t know (laughs). When these kids try to do something with insects that’s behavioral, it’s fascinating for me. If we can train cockroaches, Florida can take over the world.

Wendy: My favorite is the Buckyball. A student had developed in his garage the means to produce this as his science project and had become the primary producer and supplier of the Dupont Chemical of Buckyballs. (Named after American architect R. Buckminister Fuller, Buckyball is a cluster of 60 carbon atoms shaped like a soccer ball. Before it was discovered in 1985, only graphite and diamond were known as the two forms made of pure carbon.) We go t a kid here from Portland, Oregon, he built a nuclear reactor in his garage.

Carlene: The government may be looking at him now (laughs).

Wendy: And he’s also a concert pianist. He talks a mile a minute, wildly articulate.

Carlene: The girl that did the work with the bees, which was on Good Morning America. The kid was trying to help with a cross-pollination problem and her family’s business depended on it. These students are not just studying academically, every one of them has a reason for where they’re going. That’s what’s fascinating for me.

You tend to remember these things that have a name. If it’s one of these things that’s analyzing some chemical that’s this long (gestures two feet with her hands), it never sticks. I went by one of those booths yesterday and I had to stand there for a whole minute just to read the name of the project. We probably have to coach the kids on how to brand their projects.