This past Tuesday, the science and engineering side of Wilsonville High School held the mock symposium for the upcoming ISEF fair.

ISEF participants—students from any grade level in high school—will be competing in the district fair at West Linn High School on the 9th of March. In order to prepare for this event, Wilsonville High School always holds a mock symposium as an opportunity to have their projects critiqued.

Senior Viv Kiss and her junior sister Yaya Kiss are doing a project based on how to characterize distributions of microplastics in clam gills, and they attended the mock symposium in order to find and correct any problems they had with their presentation. “One of the things about my sister and I is that we’re really quiet,” Kiss admits comically. They are nervous yet excited about the upcoming 2020 fair.

Similarly, Linnea Collett is doing a project with her partner Jadyn Sherry to research and create a bioplastic that is biodegradable. Right now, they are currently in the research phase discovering important information about degradation. Collett and Sherry attended the mock symposium with less information than they had anticipated, yet they made the most of it. “The feedback we got from judges was really helpful,” Collett expresses, “I liked having the opportunity to prepare and get ready for the actual fair.”

ISEF districts will be taking place at West Linn High School on March 9th, and the awards ceremony will be the following day March 10th. Good luck to all Wilsonville competitors!