ISEF 2019 Trip Reports - NSA Research Directorate Awards
This that time of the year again. No, not Mother's Day. Yes, I have a wonderful mother that every year, I don't visit because I'm traveling for the science fair. So from Phoenix, Happy Mother's Day, Mom.
Onto the trip. I'm back in Phoenix Arizona. Yay! We're back! So for the first time readers. This is the fifth (it's hard to believe we are at 5 already) time the Science of Security Team at NSA has organized NSA participation at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF). ISEF is the largest pre college science and engineering fair in the world. There will be about 1,800 students here from 80 countries around the world. To get to Phoenix, a student must have won a position from an affiliated regional fair. These fairs can range from a county, like Montgomery County in Maryland, to a state, Hawaii state fair (Congrats to NSA prize winners there and also in Colorado, BTW) or when we are talking internationally, a country level fair. These science fair students are excellent researchers and have the credentials to back it up. Don't think for a moment that these students are resting on the work of their parents. They are definitely the researcher.
These students are here in Phoenix to win about $3 million in prizes from multiple organizations, not just NSA. We are here to recognize 4 categorizes: Science of Security, Mathematics, Material Science and Cyber Pioneer. I have researchers coming to judge to those prizes that are experts in those fields.
Judging does begin until Tuesday. Until then, We are running an exhibit booth. By year, five, the on ground operation of ISEF is getting smoother. We're getting the hang of it. Saturday when I landed, I successfully picked up the mailed ahead packages. :) I absolutely needed to be here on Saturday to get the boxes. It's the easiest and cheapest way to get materials here.
Sunday, the show opened. We were some of the first people at ISEF. We setup our booth around noon and the exhibit hall was opened from 1pm to 5pm. Starting as a trickle, the students visited us. It has provided for some real conversations between us and them. They are simultaneously setting up their booths at the fair and seeing the exhibit hall isn't the most important task for them. Getting ready for the week. Also many students still appear to be arriving in Phoenix. The crowds of students are yet to be seen. But by dinner on Sunday night, we are starting to see them on the sidewalks. Dinner was British pasties with large portions. It was tasty.
As to the booth. We have puzzle materials, information for teachers to help teach cybersecurity, some recruitment materials, cybersecurity information, and two technological devices to talk about.
The first is the trusty Enigma Machine. Can I say trusty? I mean it was broken during WWII there are multiple movies about how it failed to protect the contents of the messages. I brought on the plan with me. I have the wooden version. Type A. It is still a great thing to talk about and to educate attendees about. It allows our booth to be more than just information / handout spot. But something we can talk about.
This year we have a second cryptographic device. A CSP-1500. A what? Yeah, This is the US Navy cryptographic device from WWII. I'm still learning about it. There are many similarities to the enigma which is really interesting.
I'll be posting pictures soon too. Time to go open the booth.
 Arriving at the airport, the monitors had ISEF messages. It was awesome. It's a really nice touch. They had the message, "The Future has Landed." Nice right? |
 New this year, we have a CSP-1500. Lots of credit to you if you know what it is. For the rest of us, it is the US Navy cipher devices from WWII. Our particular unit is from July 1942. It's equivalent to the US Army M-209 machine. This means, this year we can show both the German machine and the US Machine for WWII. The biggest challenge for showing if off is the need for a newer ribbon for printing. |
 The enigma machine. I brought this on the plane. It was my carry on bag. It's working; well. it seems the o key isn't working. The NSA Tweeted out this picture and this is the top linked tweet for #IntelISEF |
 Look at that. That's our ad/puzzle in the current issue of Science News. Can you solve it? |
 The Enigma is definately the picture machine. This is one of my favorite pictures. |
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Tuesday.
There are two parts of this day. First, we opened the booth at 0800. That's setup so that there is breakfast in the expo hall for the students during this time. Food means that this is one of the busiest times that ISEF finalists visit the hall. Breakfast lasted until 0930 at which point, things calmed down. A bit later, we moved our booth across the aisle in preparation for Thursday, Community Educational Day.
The second part of the day was reviewing the posters and finding the best. We didn't have to get the list down to 1, what we needed to do was evaluate them and find the ones that we needed to interview the following day. We were divided into 4 teams, one for each of the categories for our prizes: Science of Security, Mathematics, Material Science and Cyber Pioneer. I personally examined all the projects.
We then held discussions on which projects should receive an NSA Lapel pin. These pins are a much sought after item. We recognized about 60 students. To make this selection, we examined if the projects were relevant and did good work that we want to recognize. As judges, we take this role seriously and have discussions about the merits of each project. We do have some overlap between teams, but students still get 1 pin
Also a first, this was the earliest we ever finished this task. We left the hall at 7pm. We had 2 hours remaining.
Hi everyone,
It's been a while. Lots of working going on this year at ISEF and it really hasn't given me time to post. I'm not sure how this year is busier than others, but it feels like it, even though we have made our judging decisions faster. I know how who has want the 17 different NSA awards.
Monday.
Monday was the first day where ISEF 19 was in full swing. For us NSAers at ISEF, Monday was a day of interacting with the ISEF finalists, other visiting students, and parents at the NSA booth in the ISEF Commons. We got a NSA Twitter shoutout for our activities. Woot! Woot! As to the students, it was a steady stream over the day.
Monday Night: Opening Ceremony
And the wait is over. This year's opening ceremony's pre-show was a dance troupe that somehow the background screen interacted with it. I have no idea if its great choreography or some type of real-time tracking.
The graphical theme this year is comic books and super heros. That's right, scientists are real life heros. It's a pretty solid filtering method that turns pictures and video into the style of comic book drawings.
The keynote speaker was Feng Zhang is an American who Immigrated from China and is professor and biochemist. He is currently at MIT. He is also a SSP alumus, having earned 3rd place in the Intel Talent Search. His research is advancing gene (DNA) editing. He spoke of his research and reminded the students on 3 principles for scientific research. One of which was doing ethical research and another to stay curious and explore nature.
After the keynote, was the 2019 Intel ISEF Shout Out, which had representatives of the 80 countries, territories and regions appear on station. This is like the parade of nations in the Olympics. All six continents are represented.
The preshow dance performance
A sample of the comic / hero graphics
Feng Zhang's presenting his research. This picture is an example of his work where he made brain neurons be sensitive to light. The mouse has fiber optic cables that enable that and they thus can control the movement of the mouse's legs
All set of the opening ceremonies.
The United States being annouced.
The 2019 Intel ISEF Shout Out. All 80 countries are on stage now.