Judging FAQ

JUDGE REGISTRATION for the 2025 CYSF is FULL. If you wish to be on a waiting list, you may click here

If you wish to be a judge at the CYSF, you must:

1. Be at least 19 years old or attending a post-secondary institution
2. have a love of science
3. have a basic knowledge of the scientific method
4. be available for the first round of judging (April 11 morning).  Some judges will also be asked to be available for the second round (April 11 afternoon).

Space permitting, all people are accepted as judges unless you are contacted otherwise. You should get an e-mail confirming your registration immediately after registering.

Elementary projects are done by students in grades five and six. Most of these students have competed at a school fair and have won their place to attend the Calgary Youth Science Fair. Secondary projects are from students in grades seven to twelve and have projects that are generally more advanced than those in elementary.

We like to recommend you start at the elementary level for at least one year. Elementary projects are generally not as involved as those at the secondary level and don’t require in depth knowledge of a subject. Judges at the secondary level must have adequate knowledge of a subject so that they can ask more complex questions about project results.

We will be hosting a webinar livestream early April closer to the fair that will be recorded for those who can’t attend.  This will help both new and returning judges become more familiar with our fair, the scientific method, judging procedures and how to communicate with our young scientists.  We will thoroughly review the judging process and present examples of past projects’ assessments, as well as address new judging issues such as how we are treating generative AI usage.

Please contact us to let us know of your interest in judging for future years and we will add you to our data base.

We can’t accommodate requests to judge with your friends or colleagues. When we build the judging teams, we like to put experienced judges with less experienced or new judges. This gives us more consistent results and allows new judges to learn from past experience of the other judges.

We’ll be publishing the results online after each round of judging has been completed.

Check out our Get Involved page.

In the past there have been almost 1000 students (over 600 projects) that have participated in the fair each year.

Check out our list of Last Year’s Award Winners

You can still judge as there are many students at the fair.  We recommend that you sign up for the other level from where your child is participating (e.g. if your child is in elementary, please sign up for secondary).  There is a conflict of interest box on the judge’s registration form that you should check if you are in this situation.

The judging handbook is available online here

Click here see who our sponsors are.

Click to our Support section for more information.

Please contact us as soon as possible to let us know you can’t attend the fair. Our teams are made up just prior to the fair so as long as you give us sufficient warning it does not cause any major problems. If you had every intention of coming but for some unforeseen reason have to cancel the morning of fair day you must call the number given to you in prior mailings.

If your screen resolution is smaller, the toolbar may be hidden. The button on the top left with three lines should open it back up, and your projects are under CYSF Medal Round.

Judging will occur entirely on April 11, but students’ digital project submissions will be submitted by March 22, which will allow you to virtually preview students’ projects prior to judging.  Please use your team assignment and PIN to login to our preview page at https://platform.cysf.org/judge/login/.

• 645h – 715h: Arrive at the Olympic Oval and meet with your assigned team.  Breakfast will be served at the judges’ corral and we will have last minute instructions
• 800h: Introduce yourselves as a team to the students at your assigned projects and indicate what time each of you will be back to judge their project individually.
• 815h – 1045h: Judge your projects individually, no more than 30 minutes per project.
• 1045h -1115h: Reconvene with your group at the Judges corral and decide on one mark per project.  Submit these marks either online or hand in the mark summary sheet to the help table prior to 1115h.
• 1115h – 1200h: Aggregate comments/feedback for projects and submit these either online or to the help table.
• 1200h: medal round judging ends; please hand in all paperwork to the help table prior to departure.