ISEF 2018 - NSA RD Award Trip
Day 1 - Sunday
It's that time again. My annual set or posts about going to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Where am I? I'm back in Pittsburgh. Yep, I have completed the cycle and back where all this began.
But wait, there's more. Am I really posting on Sunday? I am. It began on Sunday this year for me.
First, I drove to Pittsburgh and we setup at the Intelligence Community Booth. Just NSA was at the booth today. Don't worry, we used the whole space so the booth was manned. The booth opened this afternoon at 5p. During the time, the traffic picked up. The expo hall has been renamed the Intel Commons. I think its just a name change. We are in the same space as last trip to Pittsburgh. Except the aisles in the room go in the horizontal direction instead of vertical. Now you can't see down the rows from the door.
The make up of the other booths also feels different. They is a much heavier university attendance. Its like a college fair. This is good for the students. That's what they are looking at, college. Less industry. We are in the US Government row. We are next door to USAID.
USAID has a fake baby, Yeah, don't know the story about it yet, but it's got my interest. And for the first time, we have more than information. I have a baby, a typewriter. I mean an enigma machine. Yep, that's right, an enigma machine. Rules to have it make it like a baby. Lots or not letting it alone. It is way heavier than you might imagine. It's like a steel box. It's really amazing that it was portable. It's been great to have. It has transformed the booth. Instead of being just informational. There is something to talk about. Something to show the students, It's an engagement piece. It allows us to start talking about it. And through that it opens to the door to talking about more things. I'm really happy that it's here this year. I think having educational things will keep making the booth better. Less immediate recruitment (yes, we have that material) ane more on teaching and building relationships. I suspect that these students will remember learning about the enigma machine far longer than about NSA student opportunities.
This afternoon session the finalists came through. Some. Most were busy setting up and getting ready. Was it worth it. Yes, I had some really good interactions with the students.
A shout out to Melinda. The first group of students, from Calvert county Maryland, talked about the NSA awards at their regional fair. They weren't the winners, but they remembered it. So great job at reaching out. It shows that the work we do, is noticed. The metrics are impossible to gather, but there is one story of the impact.
All in all. it was a quiet day, The four of us currently here were the perfect make up of people to be here. Next year, I will recommend the same thing for Sunday.
As I know you are an avid reader of SoS. What is new this year? Well besides us starting on Sunday. The theme or think beyond is the same. The giant poster of all the finalist names has moved. Instead of being near the registration desk, it is an entire side of the walkway. This means the names are in a larger font, and less are towards the floor and the top. Better positioning.That's all I have noticed so far.
Well, one thing more relevant for these posts. I accidentally forgot to update the keyboard attached to my tablet. I have a Microsoft touch covert. This is the skinny cover where the keys don't actually move. It's like a pad. I'm struggling with it. I usually use one with real keys. I think tomorrow, I'm going to buy a keyboard.
BTW, I've been tweeted.
Check out the ENIGMA Machine at @NSAGov's booth in the #IntelISEF Commons (Booth 145)! pic.twitter.com/wb1prNgvxz
-- Society for Science (@Society4Science) May 13, 2018
That's all I got. I'll keep posting, Hmn, wonder my computer clock is off by an hour.
 Interesting Building on my drive in Pittsburgh |
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 The NSA materials at the Booth |
 The application of the Tattoo 2018. |
 The finished product. I have a healthy skin color this year. See that coworkers. |
 My writing spot for the week. Well, technically, at the moment, I'm in the hotel lobby. |
 My terrible keyboard for writing this post. I'm going to do something about this tomorrow. |
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Let me just start of saying, i'm really tired at this point and I want to go to bed and tomorrow is an early day. So. I'm posting some text and pictures at a later time. Hopefully tomorrow.
Today started at 730 with us heading to the booth. Today the booth was open just from 0800 - 0930. No not a long time. They provided donuts for the students to get them up so early. I expected the booth to be dead. I was wrong. It was a really busy 1.5 hrs. There were so excited people seeing the enigma. It was a great thing to have a it was worth it.
At 0930 we packed our materials in boxes and the center will move them to our new location for Thursday. yay, don't have to move them to the hotel.
From there we went and got our judges badges. picked the perfect time. Later in the day the line was quite long. like 30min+. And into the special award organization room. NSA this time had two rows of tables.
From 1200 - 2030 we iterated looking at projects and resyning. After exhaustive search, IAR selected 42 pins to distribute. We were a little over our target and proceeded to reduce our count by 20. Math was over by 7 The other r were more judicious and were on target to begin with.
Now, I'm finishing up this post and going to bed. Tomorrow is interview day and interviews start at 0800.
Wednesday. The highlight of the trip. First up. I didn't take any pictures today. I know shocking. But fear not. Other team members did. I don't have them, so they won't be part of this post.
Today there was one task. Decide to who the winning the projects are. They are... well, I'm telling you. Thursday there is a ceremony where the students find out. So, my fingers are sealed. We got there in about 9 hrs of deliberations today.
It began with slightly before 8. We met in the judges room. And at 8 am, the students were available for the special award judges to begin interviewing. For the next 1.5 hrs it was just special award judges. This means we are very obviously on the floor. The students see us and straighten up. Everybody is watching where we go. It really doesn't help when we are slightly lost too. Kinda feels like you are taunting them. Really aren't. I promise. It's hard to keep track of where Robo 054T (made up number) is.
For Steven the leader of the very first ISEF in Pittsburgh. I'd like to report that Tilapia was not on the menu once. Sorry. Closest we got was cod. And that was only once. If you don't get it. Check back at the very first blog. Steven ate Tilapia for every meal. It became a joke.
After lunch we did some more syncing and more interviewing. While I won't currently go into all the projects that I saw. I will give an update because I did get to talk to some familiar students. They all had outstanding projects. They may or may not win the NSA prizes this year, but that does not mean they were less successful this year over past. The competition is intense, we could not recognize all the deserving and note worthy projects even with the expanded lineup of prizes. Another note was the past students may not have been within scope of our prizes. I expect they will do well on Friday in the grand prizes.
Mihir Patel was back. Last year, he took 2nd place last year on a team project on machine learning. He was a solo act this year and still in the machine learning field. This year he worked on having a ML algorithm learn movement of a looked liked like a tube with joints. He had it teach itself out to move kinda like how a baby learns to move.
Shobhita Sundaram returned after winning 1st place in Mathematics last year. She worked on finding blood markers for pancreatic cancer last time. This year, she was working providing a cheaper method to detect and predict Alzheimer's . She was using blood tests which have been cheaper but less accurate.
Catherine Lorio, who was a SoS Honorable Mention last year for her research in quantum computing, returned in optics.
Karthik Yegnesh returned for his third consecutive ISEF. He was 2nd place in SoS two years ago. He continues in the same vein.
I wish all the students well. And I appreciate the time they took to explain their research to me today.
Looking back at my previous posts, I know realize how tired I got. I labled two posts wednesday. On tuesday I had completely lost track of what day of the week it was. So for the record, day 3 was Tuesday.
So lets talk about Thursday, day 5.
Thursday of ISEF is public day and at night, the Special Awards Organizations Award Ceremony.
Public day is the only day where the public is allowed into the convention center. The vast majority of attendees are about the 4,000 local Pittsburgh middle and high school students who visit on school field trips.
I arrived at the booth in the morning and the students were just arriving. It made for a very busy day at the booth. This year was the best of the 4 years at the booth. We had the most traffic and interest. Why? you can probalby guess it, the enigma machine. By having something to teach the students, it allows you engage with the visitors, teach them something and you aren't dependent on having a conversation with them. The other thing we learned in preparing for future years was that students spend about 3 min in the booth but at the same time, an option for longer visits. A small percentage of visitors want to spend more time there. Videos or other long form material isn't so suited for the booth. The enigma is well suited for this purpose.
The other thing about thursday, no other IC partners visited the booth. It was just NSA all the time. We had right amount of materials and coverage to man it. All the handouts lasted, though one had 4 copies left.
one new addition, which benefited from or make up this year was the symposia. The IC Community was asked to do 3 sessions of how to get a job in the IC. We supported with three researchers for each session, We could man the booth and run the symposia at the same time. There was also a math topic symposia done by Dr. Bill Christian. I hear it went well. I ended up printing the certificates during that time. Needed to be ready for the night.
I think we can organize some symposia for next year. I think there are two good topics. Be inspirational and informative. There are also two distinct customers. The local students visiting and the ISEF finalists. The students are different. The local kids attend your symposia because they are required to attend it. This means you have a mix of interest and disinterest. The symposia are optional for ISEF students so those who attend have chosen to be there. This engagement means that the ISEF students have a objective in attending. They will ask you if you don't meet that.
The number of students involved this year for us is a new high which means more certificates to manage. So printed certificates and off to the hotel to get dressed in my suit.
What you wear has an impact who interactions. It's real. I like to be casual during public day. I'm more approachable by kids then a stuff adult in suit. But at night, suit is the called for attire.
Big news, the order of presenters has changed in the special award ceremony. It's alphabetical by organization except universities go last. So yay to the United States Department of Environmental Protection, She's no longer last but more in the middle. The National Security Agency, way more early. We also discovered that the some organizations use in be half of. So we should find an Aaron who works at the agency so we can become Aaron Blank in behalf of the National Security Agency Research Directorate. AA means we are first. Apparently using my name, Adam, leaves a little opportunity for others to sneak in front. :)
Anyway, Bill and I went on stage. The names were called, and I got some of the certificates to the right students. It's pretty much impossible to get perfectly accurate. There are multiple students, they come up when their names are called. each name is called right after the previous. Since each comes from a different part of the auditorium, each come a at a different arrival time.Making it more difficult. I haven'y met all the students. I used interview all the students for science of security prize. I now have pries done by other research groups. yeah. Luckily, the students are good sports as hey are used this. They just wait until we are back stage and swap.
I had invited the other remaining judges back stage to congratulate the winners. The staff thought they were the parents. haha.
And its pretty much done. We took a group photo.
One more day of updates.
And now Monday. I forgot to mention yesterday. I learned that Bubble Tea is from Taiwan.
Today's first goal was to improve my keyboard solution. I did some research and set out in the morning. I had a free morning because the booth opened at 2:30p. Took a little bit of searching but I settled on a new real key keyboard. I'm so much happier. It was open box so I got it cheap too. You know, not all keys are created equal. And even though this keyboard is much like my own forgotten real key keyboard, This one is much more of a pleasure to type on. I'm happily writing this post with no frustration from the keyboard.
Back to work. We met at 1:20 to head to the convention center. We get there and no one is at the IC Booth. Ok, we are an hour early to setup. Get all the papers out, unbox the enigma, etc. Eventually, 2:30 comes by and still just us, NSA is in attendance. The day turns out to a day of the best intelligence community members. We create two nearly duplicate tables of our materials. We do have enough. And proceed. Turns out, today is really busy. The students, parents, family members and teachers, kept both tables full and busy. Lots of resupply of materials.
And how was it. It was great. Enigma was a great resource to have. Reinforcing, that we can be amazing and if we have educational displays, that is the next way to improve the booth. In addition, having something to talk about with the international students is a good thing. We can engage with all now. I think that it has made the year so much better. The IC booth was a happening place.
Oh, and West Virginia is back. they have a Volvo in their booth.
Oh, and that tweet yesterday from the Society, NSA retreeted. :)
After the booth closed at 6:30p, quick stop to the VIP reception before the opening ceremony. Got a bit of food and off to the opening ceremonies.
And the answer you have been waiting for all year. What is the opening act. A refresher, 4 years ago in Pittsburgh, professional pogo stick jumpers, Phoenix, music of telsa coils, LA, dancer with led. And in Pittsburgh at Intel ISEF 2018 - a DJ with a 360 degree percussion set around him. Oh, it was Gangnam Style.
Up next, the host. And she wasn't a local tv station weather personality. Instead it was neuroscientist, Crystal Dilworth from Stanford. I think that Stanford is right. Following her was Roz Hundnell, president of the Intel Foundation and Maya Ajmera, president of the Society for Science and the Public. Probably because I have heard them both speak before. They were inspirational for the students. They were short. They left time for the keynote speaker, Genevieve Bell.
Genevieve Bell, was a great keynote speaker for ISEF. She isn't the traditional technology researcher/inventor. She was different. She did her phd has a anthropology and has since moved into technology. Her thesis was that Artificial Intelligence is the next revolution similar to the industrial revolution. She make a comparison between AI and the steam engine. The steam engine was a great technology, but it remade jobs, society and even culture. The steam engine really took off, when it make a train. Trains remade society. Our concept of distance. Eventually, because of the need for organization, trains brought about the standardization of time. They introduced railroad time in addition to local time. 40 years later, the English parliament passed a low for railroad time to be the offical time. The steam engine had changed society in so may parts of society. She sees AI to being a stream engine. What is unknown still, is what is the train for AI.
Now comes the really relevant part to SoS. She has been many things. But recently she has gone back to Australia to establish an applied science for AI. Wait, did I say, create a science? Yes, I did. Part of the science of AI is assurance. Oh, were are getting into SoS territory here. Want more? https://cecs.anu.edu.au/3a-institute. This could have over lapped with us. Assurance is one of the A in the 3As. They are doing all the work in one place. I wonder how that compares with a lablet. One huge difference in their effort for making a science is that they are going to be offering degrees in it. Still no where can you get a degree in the Science of Security and Privacy.
The last part of the opening ceremony is the country shout out. This year, 81 countries in attendance and two first time attendees.
And just as fast, the night was over and I am back in my hotel writing up my day. I'm not staying up late tonight. Tomorrow, meeting at the lobby at 7:30a. super. Booth opens at 8.
The Tweet. Yes, that's a windows phone.
Look at That!!! The SoS ad about doing cybersecurity science fair projects was selected for the back cover of Science News!!!
The new improved booth layout.
I'm showing how the Engima works. Great photo Katie.
Opening Ceremony
The opening music act. DJ something. something isn't the stage name.
A better view of the 360 set.
Crystal Dilworth - the Host
President of the Intel Foundation
The Keynote - Genevieve Bell. The graphics arts made my childhood pictures sepia. So they looked historical. They made me historical.
Competition for SoS?
Sunset - Pittsburgh
Country Shout Out!!!