Junior Science and Humanities Symposium (JSHS) at San Francisco State University

JSHS + I&E SFSU

Innovation & Entrepreneurship at SF State (I&E @ SFSU) is committed to fostering innovation and encouraging entrepreneurial ventures by partnering with external organizations and institutions, and offering scholarly, mentoring and advising resources. As such, I&E @ SFSU is proud to be the Northern California regional host for the Junior Science and Humanities Symposium.

As the regional host institution, we help execute on the JSHS mission to encourage and enable high school students to conduct original research in STEM fields. If you are associated with a Northern California high school in need of resources to build out your STEM research programming, please contact us at jshs@sfsu.edu.

The JSHS is a national science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) research competition for high school students (grades 9-12). The competition and symposium are supported by the Tri-Services (The U.S. Departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force), however no military service or obligation to the armed forces is required nor considered for participation, entry, competition, or award.

Students conduct and submit their original STEM research to their regional competition (SFSU for Northern California area high school students). Note, if you are in Southern California, please reach out to the JSHS National organization for more information. Three tuition scholarships will be awarded at the Northern California regional competition. Students judged to have given the first, second, and third best oral presentations at the regional competition on February 16, 2025, will receive undergraduate tuition scholarships to the institution of their choosing, payable upon college matriculation, in the amounts of:

  • Regional First Place - $2,000
  • Regional Second Place - $1,500
  • Regional Third Place - $1,000

In addition to the scholarships listed, the top two finalists will be invited to present their research in the oral competition at the National JSHS competition. Third, fourth, and fifth place regional finalists will be invited to present their research in a poster session at the same symposium. $192,000 in undergraduate tuition scholarships will be presented to the top three finalists in each of eight research subject categories at the National JSHS.

2025 Northern California Region - SUBMISSIONS OPEN November 16, 2024

2025 Regional JSHS Competition, Information, Dates & Deadlines

The 2025 Regional Symposium competition will be held in-person on the San Francisco State University campus. Key dates and deadlines for participation are:

  • November 16, 2024 – Application and submission opens. Regional symposium submission guidelines available here. 
  • January 16, 2025, 11:59 p.m. PDT – Application submission deadline. High school students submitting a paper or poster to the competition must register and upload their submissions here. Please note that the submission portal shows dates and times based on Eastern Standard Time, not Pacific Standard Time. Applications are due just before midnight on the evening of January 16, 2025, Pacific or January 17th at 2:29AM Eastern Standard Time. Adjust your timing accordingly as no extensions will be given for missed deadlines.
  • February 2, 2025 – Acceptance decisions are sent to research applicants.
  • February 14, 2025 - Last day to accept the presentation invitation. 
  • February 28, 2025 – Northern California Regional JSHS competition hosted by I&E @ SFSU
  • April 22-26, 2025 - National JSHS in Virginia.

Student presenter candidates and other symposium attendees will need to create an AEOP account (free) to apply/register. 

If you are looking for a research mentor, we highly recommend utilizing the JSHS Virtual Mentorship Program. 

 

How to Submit a Research Paper

All Northern California high school students are invited to submit a research paper for consideration in the regional competition. All papers will be evaluated by a pool of judges drawn from the faculty at San Francisco State University, and as needed, subject matter experts as identified by SF State faculty. Researchers will be notified of a decision and may be invited to present their research as a poster presentation at the regional symposium. Based up judging of poster presentations, up to ten (10) students will be selected to give an oral presentation of their research later that afternoon at the regional JSHS competition. Of the ten oral presenters, the top two (2) presenters will be invited to represent the region at the JSHS National Symposium as an oral presenter. Third, fourth and fifth places will be invited to represent the region and present their research at a poster session at the JSHS National Symposium. To submit a research paper to the Northern California Region JSHS:

  1. Download and review the research submission guidelines: JSHS Core Rules of Competition. Note - National rules of competition for 2024 may differ from those for 2023, please review the rules carefully.
  2. Download and review the Regional information and instructions packet.
  3. Go to the Regional Registration Site HERE and:

JSHS Northern California Region Results

The 2025 National Competition will be held April 22-26, 2025 in Chantilly, Virginia (VA). Regional competition results will be listed here after the Northern California Regional Symposium. Regional representative to nationals will be denoted with a (*). Regional and National event photos will also be made available here. 

The 2024 National Competition was held May 1-4, 2024 in Albuquerque, NM. Regional competition results are listed below. Regional representative to nationals are denoted with a (*). Regional event photos are available here. National event phots are available here.

REGIONAL PERFORMANCE AT NATIONALS:

  • Jingjing Liang - 2nd Place - Oral Presentation, Medicine & Health. "SEL Fusion System: Multisource Digital Biometrics and Stimuli for Early ASD Screening "

OVERALL REGIONAL RESULTS:

  1. Jingjing Liang*
  2. Eddie Zhang*
  3. Joshua Wu*
  4. Tejasveer Chugh*
  5. Danika Gupta*
  6. Vince Wu
  7. Yash Ranjith
  8. Paige  Zhong
  9. Ishaan Mandala
  10. Ashmita Appineni

REGIONAL RESULTS BY CATEGORY:

Environmental Science

  1. Vince Wu
  2. Danika Gupta
  3. Jordan Prawira

Biomedical Sciences

  1. Paige Zhong
  2. Joshua Wu
  3. Young Min

Life & Behavioral Sciences

  1. Jingjing Liang
  2. Raymond Feng
  3. Alina Wang

Medicine & Health

  1. Srinitha Sridharan
  2. Ayush Garg
  3. Sahithi Cherukuri

Engineering & Technology

  1. Ishaan Mandala
  2. Ashmita Appineni
  3. Tejasveer Chugh

Math & Computer Sciences

  1. Yash Ranjith
  2. Lucas (Zihe) Wang
  3. Logan Mann

Physical Sciences

  1. Samuel Yuan
  2. Katherine Lee
  3. Brenna Ren

Chemistry

  1. Beatrice Roberge
  2. Kara Lee
  3. Angelina Chen

The 2023 National Competition was held April 12-15, 2023 in Virginia Beach, VA. Regional competition results are listed below. Regional representative to nationals are denoted with a (*). Regional event photos of the event are available here.

REGIONAL PERFORMANCE AT NATIONALS:

  • Ava Bhowmik - 1st Place - Oral Presentation, Engineering & Technology. "A Novel Home-Built Portable Apparatus to Analyze Oral Fluid Droplets and Quantify the Efficacy of Masks."
  • Kennesha Garg - 1st Place - Poster Presentation, Environmental Science. "Effects of RootPipes on Landfill Gas Emissions."
  • Isabel Jiang - 2nd Place - Poster Presentation, Chemistry. "Sprayable, Biodegradable, Antimicrobial, Reverse-Thermal Gel for Wound Dressing."
  • Zeyneb Kaya - Honorable Mention - Poster Presentation, Mathematics & Computer Science. "MADLIBS: A Novel Approach to Multilingual Data Augmentation for Neural Machine Translation."
  • Adrit Rao - 2nd Place - Oral Presentation, Medicine & Health. "Enabling Ankle-Brachial Index Prediction from Dopplers Using Deep Learning for Peripheral Arterial Disease Diagnosis."

OVERALL REGIONAL RESULTS:

  1. Ava Bhowmik*
  2. Adrit Rao*
  3. Isabel Jiang*
  4. Kennesha Garg*
  5. Zeyneb Kaya*
  6. Samuel Wu
  7. Alan Zhong
  8. Ishaan Mandala
  9. Alexander Mehta
  10. Nihar Mudigonda

REGIONAL RESULTS BY CATEGORY:

Environmental Science

  1. Kennesha Garg
  2. Henry Yao
  3. Ishaan Mandala

Biomedical Sciences

  1. Isabel Jiang
  2. Krish Desai
  3. Colin Chu

Life & Behavioral Sciences

  1. Alan Zhong
  2. Emma Kochenderfer
  3. Nidhi Mathihalli

Medicine & Health

  1. Samuel Wu
  2. Adrit Rao
  3. Sucheer Maddury

Engineering & Technology

  1. Alexander Mehta
  2. Ava Bhowmik
  3. Shridhula Srinivasan

Math & Computer Sciences, Computer Engineering

  1. Nihar Mudigonda
  2. Zeyneb Kaya
  3. Paras Goel

Physical Sciences (incl. Physics, Astronomy, IoT)

  1. Dhruv Trivedi
  2. Kaitlyn Wang
  3. Iona Xia

Chemistry

  1. Gatik Trivedi

The 2022 National Competition was held in Albuquerque, NM. Regional competition results are listed below. Regional representative to nationals are denoted with a (*)

REGIONAL PERFORMANCE AT NATIONALS:

  • Nidihi Methihalli - 1st Place - Oral Presentation - Engineering & Technology Category. "A Physical Device to Help the Visually Impaired Read Money Using AI / Machine Learning in Third World Countries."
  • Meenakshi Nair - 2nd Place - Poster Presentation - Physical Sciences. "A Novel Deep Learning/Machine Learning Hybrid Technique for Automatic Classification of Nebulae."
  • Ayush Raj - Honorable Mention - Poster Presentation -Medicine & Health / Behavioral Sciences. "Mixup-VQ-VAE: A Novel Image Augmentation Technique for Clinical Machine Learning Applications."

OVERALL REGIONAL RESULTS:

  1. Gatik Trivedi *
  2. Nidhi Mathihalli * 
  3. Meenakshi Nair *
  4. Tony Wang
  5. Ayush Raj *
  6. Priyanka Supraja Balaj *
  7. Kenneth Shui
  8. Amith Vasantha
  9. Aakash Kumar
  10. Ryka Chopra

REGIONAL RESULTS BY CATEGORY:

Environmental Science

  1. Vedant Janapaty
  2. Kennesha Garg
  3. Yash Narayan

Biomedical Sciences; Cell/Molecular Biology

  1. Tony Wang
  2. Jai Sharma
  3. Snikitha Banda

Life & Behavioral Sciences

  1. Selin Kocalar

Medicine & Health

  1. Ryka Chopra
  2. Amith Vasantha
  3. Ayush Raj

Engineering & Technology

  1. Nidhi Mathihalli
  2. Ishani Das
  3. Sabrina Zhu

Math & Computer Sciences, Computer Engineering

  1. Rohan Sangameswaran
  2. Sanskriti Singh
  3. Ella Lan

Physical Sciences (incl. Physics, Astronomy, IoT)

  1. Meenakshi Nair
  2. Brian Chen
  3. Priyanka Supraja Balaji

Chemistry (incl. Physical Chemistry, Material Sciences, Alternative Fuels, Geochemistry)

  1. Andy Zhang

U.S. Presidential Scholar Award Nominations

Participants in the regional JSHS are eligible to be nominated for the U.S. Presidential Scholar Award, honored through the U.S. Department of Education. Each year, up to 161 students are named as Presidential Scholars, one of the nation's highest honors for high school students. 

The Northern California Region JSHS is honored to be able to nominate two (2) participant researchers for consideration. For full details on the U.S. Presidential Scholar's Award selection criteria, please refer to the U.S. Department of Education site here. 

Teachers and mentors of regional participants are invited to nominate their students for review by the regional JSHS. Students will NOT to informed of their nomination during the JSHS evaluation process, and not all regional nominations will qualify for nomination and evaluation at the national U.S. Presidential Scholar level. The U.S. Department of Education will only reach out to all official
nominees in the January of the students’ graduating year. Criteria used to evaluate nominees at the JSHS regional level are below.

If selected by the JSHS Region as a U.S. Presidential Scholar, the Regional JSHS may contact the student and/or the student’s teacher or mentor for additional information about the student.

  • Current High School Junior (11th grade) – Graduating between December 2024 and August 2025
  • A past or current JSHS participant
  • A STEM-oriented student who has demonstrated significant independent effort, persistence, and accomplishment despite barriers, hurdles to success for limited access to resources.
  • Persistence, problem-solving, level of effort, and leadership characteristics are given higher weight than technical proficiency in STEM competition.
  • Accomplishments and leadership roles in extracurricular and community activities
  • Social concerns and contributions to others
  • Awards/other commendations
  • Well-rounded
  • Shows initiative
  • Character and commitment to high ideals
  • Out-of-school responsibilities
  • Special talents, skills, interests
  • GPA / Rank / Test scores – Minimum overall GPA of 3.0 or better (on a 4.0 scale)
  • Advanced or special courses
  • Academic awards
  • Depth-range-breadth of knowledge / demanding courses

Applicants MUST meet one or more of the following criteria

  • Extraordinary achievement
  • Heavy workload or extensive family responsibilities. Students have unusual responsibilities such as part-time jobs to help their parents pay bills, care for other family members or live in a single-parent household.
  • Obstacles to overcome – Academic or personal obstacle
  • Diversity1 - Criteria for selecting students who fit the definition of diverse include students who self-identify with two or more of the following criteria:
    • Underrepresented2 - Identity as an underrepresented racial or ethnic minority in STEM.
    • Qualify for free and reduced lunch
    • First-generation college student
    • Students learning English as a second language
1 Representative of diverse intellectual, social, ethnic, and economic backgrounds.
2 Underrepresented populations include low-income students; students belonging to race and ethnic minorities that are historically underrepresented in STEM (i.e., Alaska Natives, Native Americans, Blacks or African Americans, Hispanics, Native Hawaiians, and other Pacific Islanders); students with disabilities; students with English as a second language; first-generation college students; students in rural, frontier, or other Federal targeted outreach schools; and females in specific STEM fields (e.g., physical science, computer science, mathematics, or engineering).

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

  • Team Research - The research I want to submit was conducted as a part of a team research project. How can I submit the research and/or acknowledge the team members in the application process?

    JSHS requires all submissions be on an individual basis, even if the research was conducted by a team. Acknowledgement of the work of team members and co-authors is made on the "Statement of Outside Assistance" form. Please refer to the National competition's "Core Rules of Competition" for more details. Note, any one piece of research can only be submitted for JSHS competition by one person, and JSHS awards and scholarships are awarded only to the person who submitted the research for competition. 

 

  • Mentors - I did not have a mentor on the research. / My parent(s)/relative(s) helped me with my research. How do I fill out the mentor section of the application? 

    Parents can be mentors as well. If no one helped/advised/or assisted you in the research, then leave the mentor section blank, or enter "NA." Remember, you must acknowledge and give due credit to anyone that helped you with the research. 

 

  • Symposia Time Conflicts - I have a time conflict with the [Regional/National] symposium day/time. Am I still eligible for the [Regional/National] competition and/or awards?

    No. All research competitors must physically be present at the Regional symposium in order to present their research. If you are selected for the Northern California Regional symposium, you are allowed to leave after judging and are not required to stay for awards. The National JSHS symposium requires full attendance of the entire symposium. If you place in the top five at regionals, you may qualify to represent the region at nationals. However, if you are not able to attend the full, national symposium (from the start to the end date), and travel with the regional delegation (depending on the national symposium location, this may add another day before and after the symposium, making it a total of a five-day commitment), you will not be eligible to represent the Northern California Region at nationals. No exceptions.

 

  • Acceptance Rates - How many people submitted research for consideration? What was the acceptance rate for the [Regional/National] competition?

    Regional and National JSHS do not release application data or acceptance rates. The Northern California Region of JSHS is highly competitive. Historically, NorCal Regional finalists have performed very well at the National Symposium.

About the Junior Science Humanities Symposium (JSHS)

The JSHS is a national symposia program designed to encourage and grow high school (grades 9-12) engagement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) scholarship. The JSHS supports workshops, panels, career exploration and networking opportunities. To find out more about JSHS, please visit https://www.jshs.org/.

The JSHS Symposium is made possible through a grant from the National Science Teaching Association and Army Educational Outreach Program (AEOP). Learn more about STEM opportunities through the Army Educational Outreach Program.