0:01 hey there my name's rishab I did science
0:03 fair for over 8 years winning some of
0:06 the top awards at regeneron ISF broadcom
0:09 Masters in National JS today I'm an
0:11 undergrad at Harvard and I still make
0:13 science posters for research symposiums
0:15 and conferences in this video I'm going
0:17 to be walking you through from start to
0:19 finish on how you can design a winning
0:22 masterful science fair board I work with
0:24 multiple students every week to coach
0:27 them to win ISF jshs and other science
0:29 fairs and one thing that I always tell
0:31 my students is that you guys have to
0:34 make sure the primary subject of the
0:36 science fair is you you are the
0:38 scientist you are the individual that's
0:40 presenting your work just remember treat
0:42 your poster board as an aid it's there
0:44 to help you this video was sponsored by
0:46 poster Smith and I've actually partnered
0:48 with them to offer a promo code for you
0:51 guys to get extremely fast shipping and
0:53 also an amazing price for a high quality
0:55 poster more on that later all right so
0:57 this here is my winning ISF science fair
0:59 trifold board and a ton of students
1:01 email me or they write down in the
1:03 comment section of the video that hey
1:05 rishab I'm you know a seventh grader in
1:06 middle school it's my first year
1:08 competing in science fair I have no idea
1:10 how to you know Design This sort of
1:12 board well don't worry guys I'll show
1:13 you how you can design this board but
1:15 just something to consider here is that
1:18 this you know is a winning ISF board
1:20 it's two years worth of work condensed
1:21 as you guys can see there's a ton of
1:23 small images a ton of small text so if
1:24 it's your first year competing in
1:26 science fair or to be Frank if you just
1:29 don't have a crazy amount of material
1:30 that you think you could even fit on a
1:32 board then you may want to go with this
1:34 sort of style this is actually not a
1:37 full poster print but rather using 8.5
1:38 by 11 sheets of paper just printed in a
1:40 standard you know laser color printer
1:42 sort of thing you cut those out and glue
1:44 them onto your board or use double-sided
1:46 tape and I'll give you guys the exact
1:48 sort of methods that I use to assemble
1:49 this board as well but it's just
1:50 something to consider at the very
1:52 beginning all right so you want to make
1:53 your science for poster board in
1:55 PowerPoint and print it out well let me
1:57 show you how to do that this here is my
1:59 ISF template right and I created this
2:01 this one in my junior year of high
2:03 school ended up winning ISF and I
2:04 decided to use it for my senior year
2:06 research project as well as you can see
2:09 over here now that being said I just
2:10 highlighted this there's literally
2:12 thousands of elements being highlighted
2:15 on this on the single pptx took me a ton
2:17 of time to make that being said how can
2:19 you kind of get this template well
2:20 unfortunately I don't really want this
2:22 just floating around on the internet and
2:24 every kid kind of using this poster so
2:26 what I've decided to do is actually
2:28 include it in my a toz course where I
2:30 teach students how to make a WI science
2:32 fair presentation enjoy their research
2:35 and also you know answer hard judging
2:36 questions and really appeal with their
2:38 posters and whatnot so if you want to
2:40 see my kind of Master Class where I
2:42 teach you how to win ISF win national
2:45 science fairs and also have this sort of
2:47 a template included along with my ISF
2:49 quad chart and some other useful stuff
2:51 go check out my course it'll be linked
2:52 in the description below you want to
2:54 just create this by hand how do you do
2:55 that well let me let me actually show
2:57 you exactly how I did that right I'm not
2:59 going to gatekeep that if you create a
3:01 new Pres presentation and PowerPoint you
3:03 can go to page setup over here you can
3:05 type in you know your width your height
3:08 let's say you want um 48x 36 this is
3:10 pretty standard for you know your
3:12 Elmer's trifold you'll find in Walmart
3:14 right um You scale that voila now you
3:16 have your your poster now the next step
3:18 is of course making all those different
3:21 boundaries and tons and tons of lines on
3:23 here um again tons of time that that
3:25 goes into creating a template like that
3:27 but that being said what kind of things
3:29 do you need on the actual poster here on
3:31 PowerPoint like how do you create those
3:32 well what you can do is you can go to
3:34 insert and you can actually create these
3:36 sorts of shapes you can create you know
3:38 squares for these different boxes and
3:40 whatever you need but what what should
3:41 you title those what should those
3:43 actually be called some people will have
3:45 abstracts other people won't some people
3:47 will have hypotheses other people will
3:49 have engineering objectives instead
3:51 other people won't have either of those
3:52 because there's a they're a math project
3:54 and they want to talk about their Lemma
3:56 or their theorem or whatever so that
3:57 being said there are tons of different
3:59 types of projects that will need to use
4:00 different templates typically they're
4:02 going to have two broad categories one
4:05 is science inquiry and the other is
4:07 engineering now you you may be thinking
4:09 no Risha mine has a biology or mine has
4:11 a computer science right but at its core
4:13 there are two main buckets science
4:15 inquiry and Engineering those can fit in
4:17 any of those categories right you can
4:18 have an engineering project in the
4:21 biology category but those are the two
4:23 main types of projects one is where you
4:25 come up with a hypothesis that in this
4:28 experiment I think that the eoli colony
4:30 is going to die or you know in this
4:33 experiment I think that you know this
4:35 specific Gene will be highly expressed
4:37 that is more of a science inquiry sort
4:39 of project you're doing an experiment to
4:40 answer a question you have some sort of
4:42 guess or a hypothesis about where that's
4:44 going to go on the other hand you have
4:46 your engineering types of projects
4:48 engineering projects are primarily what
4:50 I did those ones you instead come up
4:52 with an engineering claim so as you guys
4:54 can actually see over here I will show
4:56 parts of this to you robustness
4:58 functionality specifications um and
5:00 that's actually specified how you're
5:01 going to build your solution what it
5:03 should have right the primary secondary
5:04 end points that you want your solution
5:06 to have and that's what you would
5:08 include on your board but roughly there
5:09 will be these sorts of sections right
5:11 some sort of abstract and introduction
5:13 near the top I was actually super unique
5:16 in my visual abstract when of the judges
5:18 uh display and safety head actually came
5:20 up to me at at at my project and was
5:22 like we had a super lengthy conversation
5:24 about your project you're the first
5:26 project that we've ever seen that's used
5:28 this visual abstract thing and we had to
5:30 discuss whether or not should disqualify
5:32 you know you for having that visual
5:34 abstract but he said the the conclusion
5:36 the committee made was that because it's
5:38 a visual abstract not an abstract you're
5:40 allowed to have it on the board and so I
5:42 guess that rule is now clarified for
5:44 everyone you can have a visual abstract
5:46 anyway you have an introduction some
5:48 sort of background information I like to
5:49 include figures you know you do want to
5:52 show not necessarily just constantly
5:54 bombard people with paragraphs a text so
5:56 some bullet points couple images here
5:58 and there definitely looks nice and you
6:00 know gets your point across then some
6:01 form of research objectives again this
6:03 could look like a hypothesis or an
6:05 engineering claim or some variation of
6:08 that then in the main middle section
6:09 here what people typically do is have
6:11 their methods or procedures so here you
6:13 can create a ton of different figures
6:15 again show not tell is a great idea here
6:18 because as an ISF competitor science
6:19 fair competitor you're going to have
6:21 your board hanging and then you're
6:22 really just going to be pointing to the
6:24 board or pointing to specific things
6:25 you're not going to be reading off your
6:27 board right that's you know a negative
6:29 so you want to mainly have figures and
6:30 images on your board and you're really
6:33 just pointing to those and saying oh as
6:35 you guys can see here this is a
6:37 71.9% Improvement or as you can see over
6:40 here there's a dip in the graph whatever
6:41 right you want to point to things and
6:43 that's why I like to have a lot of
6:45 images in the method section finally
6:46 here there's a a results in the main
6:49 middle part here again this is like a
6:51 very you know consistent format that
6:52 I've seen across posters and I think
6:55 this kind of works best um then on the
6:57 right side there's a again a ton of
6:59 variability in what people do so some
7:01 people will have data analysis other
7:03 people just go straight into conclusions
7:04 what I'd recommend is if your project
7:06 involves a lot of data let's say you're
7:08 doing some wet lab experiments or you're
7:10 developing a computational algorithm you
7:13 want to have some form of data analysis
7:15 or statistical analysis thrown in there
7:17 on the right side there then below that
7:18 you can have your conclusions and
7:20 discussions because that's where you're
7:21 really getting your point across that
7:23 what do these results mean and
7:25 contextualizing those sometimes in the
7:27 discussions people like to toss in
7:28 future work there but I thought it just
7:30 looked a little a little bit nicer to
7:31 separate those out so that's what I
7:33 ended up going with and then at the
7:34 bottom here this is a question that I
7:37 actually get a lot which is about key
7:38 references because a ton of people are
7:40 like I can't fit 30 references onto my
7:43 poster well what you can do is use key
7:45 references and I honestly don't see a
7:46 lot of people doing this but I I hope
7:48 people start doing it now because this
7:49 is a great way to do it you know print
7:51 out your full bibliography your full
7:54 references in your paper and instead
7:55 only include the most important ones on
7:58 your poster I think that's a very solid
8:00 way to approach it so that's how you can
8:02 kind of design this again a ton of time
8:06 went into putting the exact colors and I
8:08 literally made Vector Sprites for all of
8:10 these and added shading onto them and
8:13 and really spent like hundreds of hours
8:15 into fine-tuning this board so as I was
8:17 actually going to look for my uh Middle
8:19 School level science faer poster where I
8:21 printed out 8.5x 11 sheets I just found
8:24 this poster way back from 2018 from my
8:26 like seventh grade science fair project
8:28 so as you guys can see I came a long way
8:30 I think I was using some form of a
8:32 template in this one and then modified
8:34 it a decent bit to come to this one uh
8:37 but yeah I mean it overall I guess the
8:39 same sort of sections apply right you're
8:40 some form of B uh background and
8:42 Abstract some research objectives
8:44 hypotheses that sort of thing methods
8:47 then results data analyses conclusions
8:49 and and future work that's sort of the
8:51 rough sort of layout you should go for
8:53 on a poster that being said how can you
8:55 go about the other type of science fair
8:57 poster so this is kind of one way to do
8:59 it right you just open up a Google doc
9:01 and you guys can actually just type in
9:03 this sort of text like this and print
9:06 them out straight out on an 8.5x 11 then
9:08 you can cut those up or glue them onto
9:10 your poster accordingly I think this is
9:11 a really simple way to do it that
9:13 definitely works for a lot of people but
9:14 something that's just a little bit more
9:16 advanced but I think looks a whole lot
9:19 better is instead using Google slides
9:20 and here you can create you know again
9:24 page setup set up uh an 8.5 by 11 sort
9:26 of sheets so that actually you can end
9:28 up printing those out and um once you
9:30 set that up you can you can actually add
9:32 in these sorts of headers so just add in
9:34 like a rectangle at the top then type in
9:36 some sort of text and then you guys can
9:38 print those out and that's exactly how
9:40 you can make a title as well as you can
9:43 see here like if you just print out this
9:44 part and and end up cutting this part
9:47 out and glue those together uh side by
9:48 side you can even create a create a
9:50 title in that way so I'd highly
9:51 recommend you explore one of those two
9:53 different ways again the same sort of
9:55 thing applies in terms of sectioning and
9:57 what material to include on your poster
10:00 but I would recommend you know uh laying
10:02 those out cutting them up on your board
10:03 and then putting them on now how do you
10:06 actually construct a poster board right
10:08 you'll see some of my videos or you'll
10:10 see some of these things online like how
10:12 do you actually get these physically
10:14 onto a board I feel like that's kind of
10:16 something that's never discussed and
10:17 it's kind of hard the first time you're
10:20 doing it uh to even create these sorts
10:22 of things so if you're just glue let's
10:24 say you get your yourself a 36x 48
10:27 trifold and you have your posted printer
10:30 what you can do is use double-sided tape
10:32 to actually just Roll Along the
10:34 double-sided tape along all the edges of
10:37 the poster as you can see here and then
10:39 paste that on top now another method you
10:41 can do if you print out the paper
10:44 version is you can put glue on the edges
10:46 or again double-sided tape and put those
10:49 again laid out onto your trifold poster
10:52 and it'll end up looking something like
10:54 this where you actually have those
10:56 slides cut out like this okay so let me
10:58 put you all on a little hack and this is
10:59 something something that comes with
11:02 years of science fair experience and
11:04 that's to use a different type of poster
11:07 called a fabric poster you won't see
11:09 these super often but as you guys can
11:11 see right here the sponsor of this video
11:14 poster Smith has gone ahead and printed
11:16 me my you know one of my winning ISF
11:18 posters as you guys can see right here
11:20 on excellent high quality fabric I
11:22 actually showed this to some of my
11:24 classmates here at Harvard who are ISF
11:25 winners themselves and they're like wow
11:28 I've never seen you know fabric poster
11:30 this kind of thin it's very easy to
11:32 transport as well as very very high
11:34 quality I actually think this is much
11:36 higher quality than some of the posters
11:38 on that sort of glossy print or on
11:40 poster paper in addition it doesn't
11:42 really tear or anything like that so
11:43 very very nice material in addition to
11:46 that I was actually very shocked because
11:49 I ordered my poster and on the same day
11:51 you know the poster was shipped and they
11:53 actually promised that the deliver is
11:55 within just 2 days so if you're just
11:57 right before that science fair deadline
11:59 you have no idea what to do Post poter
12:02 Smith is your guy and I I think the
12:03 strongest benefit here is really just
12:05 about that setup it was super stressful
12:07 to you know go to science fairs with
12:09 your either your tube and then unroll
12:11 that with the risk of like tearing and
12:12 things like that or not being able to
12:14 roll it in the small enough size to fit
12:16 into the Container or then when you're
12:18 laying it out actually like taping or
12:21 gluing everything on or in most cases if
12:22 you're going to a regional or state
12:23 science fair you actually print that out
12:26 beforehand onto your trifold and then
12:27 have to haul that all the way over to
12:29 downtown or wherever your science ha is
12:31 being held in the back of the car it
12:34 gets wet it gets you know whatever it is
12:36 fabric posters you you don't run into
12:37 any of those issues you can literally
12:39 fold this up in fact I'm here filming at
12:42 the Harvard Library and from my dorm I
12:43 straight up just you know folded the
12:46 poster just like this there's no creases
12:48 there's no risk of tearing or anything
12:50 like this and on top of that it's
12:52 extremely portable and and light and
12:54 small right I literally had this in my
12:56 backpack I kid you not I just fold it up
12:58 like this put it in my backpack without
13:00 you know any sort of worry or stress in that
13:02 that
13:04 regard and then I think in terms of
13:06 setup it's it's really nice to just be
13:08 able to hang this up on you know your
13:10 booth or you know put in a simple
13:12 Thumbtack or something like that and
13:14 just have your poster ready in a matter
13:16 of seconds or even minutes so this I was
13:18 is a highly recommended option from
13:20 posters smith.com once again and I
13:22 wanted to create the best possible deal
13:24 for you guys so that's why I've actually
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13:40 top of that if you happen to need
13:42 multiple posters if you actually order
13:44 two or more posters you get an
13:47 additional $20 off so it's a great value
13:49 I'd highly recommend you use poster
13:51 Smith and I'll have them linked down in
13:52 the description down below thanks so
13:54 much to poster Smith for sponsoring this
13:56 video and helping you guys out with
13:58 printing your posters now that being
14:00 said how do we actually spice up your
14:02 presentation add in some extras to
14:04 really make you stand out so now that
14:06 you've got your beautiful poster set up
14:08 there's two more things you can do
14:10 number one is add in extras to your
14:13 science fair Booth right you can have in
14:15 additional materials such as a binder or
14:17 a computer or a lab notebook which
14:19 really just add a little bit of a touch
14:22 to spice up your overall presentation
14:23 you know you can point to specific
14:25 things from your lab notebook or let's
14:27 say you're not at your booth and a judge
14:29 just comes by they can look through that
14:30 extra material and this is something
14:32 that is not necessary but I've noticed
14:34 that a lot of top winners have this this
14:36 is typically because they perform some
14:37 form of literature review or they write
14:39 a research paper which they can add into
14:41 their binder you know annotate out
14:43 research papers highlight things it
14:44 really looks good to show that you've
14:46 put in the work for This research
14:48 project now these extras are a great way
14:50 to enhance I guess the visuals of your
14:52 presentation but as I alluded to at the
14:54 beginning of this video I think it's
14:56 super important that students really
14:57 focus on themselves right you're the one
14:59 speaking you're the one conveying your
15:01 science and so at the end of the day it
15:03 really comes down to what you're saying
15:05 as a part of your presentation and as I
15:07 mentioned I coach a ton of students on
15:09 almost a daily basis through Rish
15:10 Academy which I'll have linked down in
15:12 the description below but one thing that
15:14 I really like to tell students to focus
15:17 on is highlighting three main points
15:18 whether it's in their background their
15:20 methods or at the very end of their
15:22 presentation always highlight several
15:23 key things that you really want judges
15:25 to take away from your project this is
15:27 something that other ISF winners have
15:29 also told me another big suggestion that
15:31 I have for students is to really work on
15:33 making their tone a little bit more
15:35 conversational kind of how I'm speaking
15:36 to you guys right now rather than
15:38 seeming really rehearsed and scripted
15:40 really focus on building a natural tone
15:42 this can be developed by speaking in
15:43 front of a mirror or talking to parents
15:45 or friends while presenting a research
15:47 project and the final piece of advice I
15:49 have for you in your presentation is to
15:51 remember that the audience never knows
15:53 what you left out I actually gave a
15:55 tedex talk several years ago and one of
15:57 the best pieces of advice that I
15:59 received was that you know you can cut
16:01 anything from your presentation the
16:03 audience never knows what you left out
16:05 they only know what you put in and so
16:06 for students who are struggling to get
16:08 their presentation within a time limit
16:09 or something like that remember you can
16:12 always make Cuts if you enjoy this video
16:13 and you want more tips to win science
16:15 fair click the link in the description
16:17 below remember to use poster Smith to
16:19 print out your posters again great
16:20 service thanks to them for sponsoring
