ISEF 2016 - NSA RD Award Trip

Monday continued. 2pm the Expo Hall opened and within just a few min students and parents came in to see who was there. We had a steady stream throughout the four hours that the expo hall was opened. One difference this year is that the dinner was not only in a different room it was far off in a different room. The result was there was less of have tidal wave that we experienced in Pittsburgh as people finished eating. I suspect that this year Tuesday will become a busier day.

The experience is once again rewarding talking with students, encouraging them to excel. It was also great to learn about where they are from and what they did research on. One project we are looking forward to seeing in person is optimal shapes of ice cubes for restaurants. I will find it and report back.

The top handout this year was the custom handout that we built that listed the NSA High School and College Freshman student programs. We went through lots of those, but we still have supplies from the 250 for Tuesday and Thursday. The other popular handouts were the other custom ones we made, the information on the Math Talent Search; What is NSA and other related cybersecurity competitions and programs. Gen Cyber is also popular. I really think from our presence here; NSA will be getting applications from top students to the student programs that would not have occurred without being here.

ODNI this year joined NSA in sponsoring a booth at the expo hall. They are representatives from both CIA and FBI in attendance. CIA put their recruitment QR code on a temporary tattoo. That's a new distribution method for the VO. :) The CIA had hand fans, lanyards and magnets while FBI had bags and other things. They had a great showing at ISEF and good attendance at their booth too.

Later in the day; we worked in shifts so that we could eat dinner. Dinner was salad, rice, vegetables; mac and cheese; chicken and the fish was Cod. For those who were wondering there was no Tilapia. After dinner we attended a VIP reception before the opening ceremony. Some finger food and drinks. While the brazed short rib with garlic mash potatoes and the Beef Wellington were good, the star to me was the avocado brushetta.

At 6:30, we were escorted into the main hall for the opening ceremony and showing our VIP seats. We were directly behind the students. This time we didn't share a row with Nobel laureates; they were in the section next to us.

The open ceremony pre show was again super impressive. While there were no professional pogo people; this year was a musical group that used plasma generated from Tesla coils to generate sounds to a rocking beat. Visually and Audibly impressive. Check out the pictures of the giant musical lighting bolts. Yeah, that's pretty much the way to describe it.

The MC for the night, was a Jonathan Lowe, reporter from the CBS station in Phoenix. He did a great job; he was young and energetic; did a great job making it enjoyable for the students. Quick introductions from the new head of the Intel Foundations; one from the president of the host, ssp, a vp from intel and the keynote address. The Keynote was given by Tan Le from Emotiv Life Sciences. She was inspirational. She talked how her family escaped South Vietnam after it fell and immigrated to Australia. She said after she sold her first company that made telecommunications software; she was at a crossroads. She decided she wanted to work for the benefit of humanity; living and working that was worth the sacrifices that her parents made for her. There will be uncertainty with choices; and persistence is needed. But the most important message from her talk was to rely on your differences; don't try to conform; but think in a different way; its ok to be and outsider because you can think differently and not be part of the group think.

After Tan Le's keynote; was the country shout out. The best part of the opening ceremony. Representatives from each country; are called to the stage; carrying posters that they made representing their country. Stats were 75 countries and 1764 students in attendance.

To see more of what is going on there is ISEF on Facebook; SnapChat; Vine; Instagram; and Twitter. Easiest to link to twitter #IntelISEF & #IntelISEF2016

That's all for me tonight. See you all tomorrow.

Wednesday is interview day. Time to wear a suit day. This is a long intense day for the finalists and not much easier; though less stressful for the judges. Today we worked in teams to interview each candidate. Each was interviewed by both teams. There were many solid choices. By the end of the day we agreed with the choices; though we could have easily awarded more projects. They were that good. It's easy to forget that they are high school students as times their work is well on their way to phd dissertation.I will post late Thursday / Friday about the winners. They don't know yet until the award ceremony Thursday night, so my fingers are sealed.

Back to the day. Today was the earliest of all the days. We meet around 7:30 at our judges table and discussed the plan to interview the students. The first hour, 8am to 9am, only the SAO judges are allowed in with the students. This is a great opportunity to find the students free. We coordinated so that the two teams would try to cover different students in this first hours so that we had at least one interview done with about half before the grand prize judges entered.The grand prize judges entered at 9am. Their interviews were scheduled and organized. Each judge interviewed approximately 14 projects over the day; with each interview being 15min. While the students were not being interviewed they were free to be interviewed by the special award judges. We found the schedule because it is hung up by the HUB (the Hub is in the center and its pretty much the resource location for the finalists). I took pictures of the sections so that we had handy reference when we out. Then we would look at our list of projects and see when they would be available and then mark the time. If we were blocked by another judge, we checked the photos to see what else was available. Many times the other projects were close by so we could easily see if they were free or not. We did this from 9 to 11:30 then there was a break for everyone to get lunch. At lunch we secretly ranked those we saw, so as to get an unbiased opinion before discussion what we had seen. We made note of projects that one team had rated highly and the other had not yet seen so to make sure they talked to those projects. We resumed at 1:15 and continued to 3 to 4. We caucused at our table and refined our list until we had the winner and two 2nd place. (We generally call the runners up honorable mentions; but at ISEF, the awards are announced as 1st and 2nd place). I took our red folder with our paper work; filled out the results and signed it. Once I turned it in, they entered the information in the computer; and then printed the results, which I signed again.

Our table in the judging room has a sign that says NSA Research Directorate. It feels like judges who have had a connection to NSA like to drop by and say hi. Which is cool. Some even give tips about projects that they liked and have a cyber component. Again cool. I want to avoid having false negatives and consider all projects that have a cyber aspect.

After making the decision we excited the judging room just about 5pm. We couldn't really leave, because the parents and formed a human wall by the exit from the exhibit room. The finalist would exit and the gathered would cheer for them. Kinda like a a football team exiting the tunnel onto the field,. With about 1750 students, this procession out took a while and the cheers kept on coming.

After dinner; I returned to my room to prepare the certificates to hand out on Thursday. I had the publisher files that were originally used use to print the certificates; I added a text box for the students name and removed everything else. I then saved the files as a PDF. The files were blank except for the name in the correct position. I put those files in my email and also on flash memory and set out to find a printer. The hotel business center has printers, but the hotel is full of students so there could be some possibility of leaking the results so my first idea was to use the printers in the judging room. I returned and the printers were still there. I looked on one of the computer and there were open certificates from other organizations. Put my flash memory into the laptop (over coming my mental block of a cross domain violation) and put a test certificate into the printer. the name came out printed upside down. Tried again with the seals on the certificate to the left and the name was perfectly positioned. So I then printed two copies of the certificates for each winner (in case something happens). The certificates were already printed back in the office and signed by the director of research. I just needed to the print the names on them. The idea worked perfectly. Great looking certificates and signed by the director of research.I put those in a folder for safe keeping.

I then returned to the exhibit hall to take pictures of the posters were are awarding. The students are not there so they won't find out.

By then, it was probably 7:30 and the judges reception was open; and we were finished the work for Wednesday. Obviously once I returned to the hotel room; I wrote up what had happened this day. Unlike last year; I know enough to copy my post in the clipboard before I click submit. If there is an error; I won't loose what I've been writing for the past hour.

Thursday had two main activities. First it was public day so during the day we took shifts in the NSA booth at the Expo Hall. The 2nd main part was during the evening when it was the Special Awards Organization Presentation Ceremony.

The day began at 8am with the expo hall opening for public day. This is the one day where the public and in particular school children visit the science fair. The highlight is that from 10 am to 2 pm the finalists are to man their booth for the school kids. The kids are middle and high school students mostly from Arizona. This year they expected about 4,000 students to attend. Besides the posters; the school children visit the expo hall, and have science presentations.

We met many students, we often talked about the high school and college freshman programs that NSA has. Many kids didn't know what we did, so the NSA overview handout was useful. We used the Gen Cyber often, as there are free summer camps in cyber area for both kids and teachers. Ironically, based on the Gen Cyber Camp page, there were no camps in Arizona. The Cytological Museum Fun Book was a huge hit with the middle school kids. When I was out for lunch, I came back, and they were like, we are out. There was a like a foot tall stack under the table when I left. So huge success there. I expect many more high caliber students to apply for NSA student programs this fall. Most of the programs accept applications Sept 1 thur Oct 31. For us, the booth saw steady traffic from the beginning of the day; til about 3pm; when the school children boarded their buses to return to school. Once student I talked to said it was a four hour drive home for his school. We packed up the booth around 4 and visited the Intel Quad.

During the time away from the booth; we visited the posters and took a look at the posters not relevant for the NSA award. This one girl built robotic hands; connected them to a computer which used voice recognition software and sign the words it heard. She even upped the game by doing a usability survey to see how effective it was. Other kids developed a way to recycle plastic into cloth and clothes. And they say the industry is wrong saying that the recycle percentage can't be above a small percentage. They went with 100% recycled materials. Sully took them to the US Patent Office display; 2 over from us, so that they can learn about how to protect their ideas. They want to benefit all; if they don't patent; then someone else could and make lots of money on their idea. They should patent and could license for free for most impact.

The Intel Quad is a special room for the finalists (there are almost none at 4:30 on Thursday) where Intel shows of the latest in computing technology. We got to try many of the technologies there with no lines. First up was a caged area to experiment trying to fly a small quad copter through come obstacles. We mostly failed. We managed to get the copter stuck on the sides and crash the ground a few times. They also had a setup this year to test Google Cardboard. Which I reluctantly tried. Last year, the Intel Quad had Oculus Rifts and I quickly succumbed to motion sickness.

With Google Cardboard; the video was not interactive and was a video of riding a rollercoaster. It didn't matter if I moved my head; the screen showed the same image so I didn't have the ability to look around like with the Oculus Rift. Yes, I still felt the motion; but it wasn't as bad. Still wasn't really enjoyable. As a kid, I loved roller coasters, but I hope this isn't a sign that I'm too old for them now. I don't know; i haven't been on one in a while. Also to test were some multi touch games. One game, you drew a path and car would try to follow the path in a race. Another game was digital air hockey. It was fun, but had it challenge in that you couldn't let your finger leave the screen. I played against Carl and Lisa and Melinda tried it too. There were also drum playing screens and a ship dodging asteroid as controlled by waving your hands in the air. One really cool concept that they had was this board that you could answer the main questions like "Tell us how you Think Beyond" (Think Beyond is the theme of ISEF 2016). We got a special shout out, :By Joining the NSA." Yeah, not sure how that is thinking beyond, but whatever. A signing board or something like that would be a cool addition to HoT-SoS; though I doubt professors and phd students will be as funny and random as high school students.

After leaving, we took the booth case, 83lbs by the way, and the one box of left over handouts to the fedex office to mail back. In the future; we can mail materials to a fedex office and pickup. It's free over shipping to the hotel.

At this point; I went incognito; in other words, I put a a suit on and dress shoes. This was because Thursday night I was the NSA award presenter. The ceremony began at 7pm. I saw in alphabetic order (no that's not the order we appear in Google). I was between Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the National Institute of Health (NIH). When it came to by turn, I walked on stage to a little white X in the middle. I made sure to carry the folders with the certificates with the NSA logo facing out so all could see it. The MC, the local weatherman, call the NSA Research Directorate, but instead of saying N S A. He read the prompt and sounded out NSA. N'sa. Yeah. Note to next year, adjust our title to National Security Agency Research Directorate.

He called our the winners and all 3 winners came to the stage. We posed for pictures and walked to the side for additional photos. Before then; Rucha had to return to the stage because she won another award. Once she returned; we took several professional photos. The first with our name tags and a paper that said NSA Research Directorate and then a photo without name tags or the paper. I handed them some NSA/Science of Security materials, such as a NSA notepad, a copy of The Next Wave which was the SoS issue; a LTS Sticker and a Science of Security Rocket. The winners were very happy with their materials and I invited them to visit NSA and present their research.

And just like that Thursday was over.

HI Shawn,

Glad you enjoy reading about it. Monsanto had a booth and I think, an award at ISEF.

Adam