Austin Regional Science Festival 2019

We proudly sent representatives from six companies in our technology family to help out with judging the Junior and Senior projects at the 2019 Austin Energy Regional Science Festival this past week.

Neftali Santos, a Digital Light Innovations representative and volunteer judge for the 6-8 grade level projects, said that the event was amazing and that the vast range of content, complexity, and execution displayed by the presentations was really impressive.

“One 7th grader was dressed for success in a suit and tie, and I was absolutely blown away by his presentation. Many kids just read directly off their board, but this young man was well prepared with a thorough knowledge base and conversational approach. The purpose of his experiment was to determine the optimum color and fabric to use in order to best keep warm in cold weather. Hearing the motives behind his project was truly inspirational. The boy’s grandfather lost a toe due to frostbite and he wants to optimize cold weather gear to prevent this kind of thing from ever happening again, especially to our military service personnel who are serving in colder environments.”

Needless to say, this particular student project was the one Neftali called his favorite.

“It is very meaningful to have the opportunity to encourage the next generations of scientists and engineers. I encouraged this student to keep up the great work, especially in mathematics because it is the language of the universe. Become fluent, and your out-of-the-box thinking will skyrocket, making difficult concepts in other subjects much easier to comprehend.”

Neftali looks forward to participating in next year’s event! TyRex has supported the science fair for several years with volunteer judges, corporate financial donations, and in-kind services as well. This year, along with our Silver Sponsorship we also sent 15 volunteer judges – the most in the history of our partnership – as well as presented a special award, connecting winning student projects with industry job shadow experiences.