TJ Machine Learning Club
Making AI more accessible
Competitions & Conferences
These are some competitions and conferences that high school students interested in machine learning, or STEM in general, can apply for.
- Research/STEM Competitions
Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF): Most prestigious international STEM research competition for high school students. Process starts with the TJ Science and Engineering Fair held in January.
Regeneron Science Talent Search (STS): Prestigious research competition for high school seniors in the U.S. with scholarships offered to top projects.
Davidson’s Scholarship: Prestigious competition that offers large scholarships to excellent research projects in many categories.
Microsoft Imagine Cup: International competition to submit innovative ideas that use some Microsoft tool. Earn a lot of money through cash prizes and take your ideas to the next level!
BioGENEius Challenge: International high school research competition for projects related to medicine or biotechnology.
Congressional App Challenge: National high school competition where students create original apps. Winners in each congressional district are recognized by their U.S. Representative.
Junior Science and Humanities Symposium (JSHS): National competition for high school research. Process starts with a presentation at state JSHS, winners qualify for National JSHS for a chance to win scholarships.
Kaggle Competitions: Compete with ML enthusiasts from around the world in competitions, where you are expected to create a model trained on a given dataset. Some competitions include large prizes for winners.
Sigma Xi Student Research Showcase: National symposium for students to present research to judges. Winning presentations in the high school category get money prizes.
- Business/Pitch Competitions
Conrad Challenge: Opportunity to present research at NASA headquarters during the finalist round and receive feedback about your product/marketing strategy from professionals.
Diamond Challenge: The Diamond Challenge provides a unique opportunity for teens to learn about entrepreneurship while putting their ideas into action. They offer $100,000 in prizes and resources to help build your idea!
Blue Ocean Competition: Fully virtual entrepreneurship competition for high school students. Primary component of the competition is to create a 5 minute video pitch.
Toshiba Exploravision: National competition where students must write a report about their science project and submit to a certain category.
- Conferences
IEEE MIT Undergraduate Research Technology Conference (URTC): Standard research conference where research papers, posters, and short talk proposals are selected after review.
JHU Global Health Leaders Conference: Learn about global health from experts and speak about some health-related topic via the Student Speaker series.
AMIA Annual Symposium High School Scholars: Research conference for High School students with projects related to biomedical informatics. All presentations and abstracts go through a selection process in order to be presented at the conference.
- Hackathons
Internships
Looking for something to do over the summer that relates to your passion for machine learning or STEM? Here are some programs you can apply for.
Aspiring Scientists Summer Internship Program (ASSIP): An unpaid summer internship program at George Mason University, where you can work with professors in a variety of different fields on a project.
Science and Engineering Apprenticeship Program (SEAP): A paid summer internship in the naval research laboratory where you work with professionals on a project.
Emerging Diagnostic and Investigative Technologies (EDIT) ML High School Internship: An unpaid summer internship working with Dartmouth-Hitchcock professor John Levy. They take in a lot of TJ students and are focused on utilizing ML for medical and cell data.
ASPIRE: An unpaid summer internship in John Hopkins’ Applied Physics Laboratory, where you work with professors in various fields including Computer Science and Mathematics/Data Science.
NIST Summer High School Intern Program Research: An internship at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
NIH High School Summer Internship Program (HS-SIP): A summer internship program at the National Institute of Health where one can research applying ML to biomedical data. Must be 17 years or older by June of the year you are applying.
HHMI Janelia High School Internship Program: Did not have a Summer 2022 program, but there may be an opportunity next year. Only for students living in Loudoun County interested in biology and computational science.
MITRE: A paid internship at MITRE with an Artificial Intelligence program.
Simons Summer Research Program: Simons Summer Research Program is a program at Stony Brook University for high school students looking to work on STEM projects with their experienced faculty.
Research Science Institute (RSI): Highly competitive summer program hosted by MIT which takes 80 of the most talented students around the world for an intense summer research program. Generally requires great accomplishments and strong motivation, such as being an ISEF finalist or an Olympiad camper, to be considered.
Cold Emailing
Cold emailing is the process of sending out emails to many professors reaching out for opportunities to research and be mentored under them. Here are some tips to be successful.
- Research the work/publications of each professor you are cold emailing
Makes the email more personal and more relevant to the professor, and they can understand in exactly what ways you can contribute/help their current research.
- Don't procrastinate
- Prepare a list of professors and your resume during winter break
The resume should be one page and clear and concise
Send emails around late January to early April.
- Prepare a list of professors and your resume during winter break
- Don't be disheartened if you don't get a response
Professors are very busy, and generally high school students receive one response for every 50 cold emails they send.
They may also take months to respond
- Email tips
Introduce yourself (Mention your name, grade level, and area of interest)
- Talk about their research, and ideas and questions you have about it (You should be genuinely interested in their research)
You could also talk about an idea you have that would be a good fit in their lab to further research/develop.
Talk about past projects, experience, and skills you have pertaining to their area of work
Attach a resume
Resume Tips
- Find a Resume/CV template on Overleaf or on Microsoft Word
Overleaf requires editing in LateX, but is generally better for making resumes and easier to format once you learn LateX
- Minimize white space
Helps make the resume look more professional and has more content that is actually useful
Make sure the resume has Skills, Experience, Education, and Project sections and optionally an Awards section.
Make your resume relevant to what you are applying to
Generally 1 page resumes are better, as they are more readable and easier to skim through, however two pagers are useful in certain scenarios that require you to be more in depth about your experience.