Region 5 Student Poster Competition Rules

Interested in Competing in the Poster Competition?

If you are interested in submitting an entry in the Poster Competition, please review the information on this page and contact the Chair or Student Activities Coordinator of your local IEEE Section or your Area Chair with your name, your email address, your school, and the title of your proposed entry. Please copy Jim Sipes at r5studentcompetitions@r5conferences.org as well.

The Area Chairs are:

If you don’t have the contact information for the Chair of your local section or know which of the four Areas your student branch is in, contact Jim Sipes at r5studentcompetitions@r5conferences.org with the information requested above.

Quick Guide

Resources

A. General

Purpose: To improve technical presentation skills of undergraduate IEEE student members.

Levels: Competitions occur at the Local Contest which feeds into the Area Contest. The top two winners from each Area are automatic qualifiers for the Region Contest and are invited to compete during the annual Region 5 Conference. There are up to eight positions available to compete in the Region Contest during the annual Conference. Area Contest third place winners may be considered to join the Region Contest under agreement of the Area Chairs if any of these eight positions remain open. The top three presentations in the Region Contest are recognized with a Region level monetary award.

Local Contests involve posters that are evaluated and graded by undergraduate engineering faculty of local colleges and universities or by judges appointed by the local colleges or universities. Local IEEE Student Branch or IEEE – Eta Kappa Nu Chapters will nominate (each can nominate one) a top-ranked poster. The poster must have received the highest grade or evaluation in an undergraduate engineering course or in an undergraduate poster competition in the local school that the IEEE Student Section belongs to.

Area & Regional Contest levels require oral presentations. At the Regional Contest level, oral presentations will be conducted in person at the Region 5 Conference.

Winners may revise their posters and presentation slides before submission to the next level. Authors of the nominated poster may submit the content of their poster for publications such as the IEEE Potentials magazine, etc.

Eligibility: The entrant must be an undergraduate and an IEEE student member (or pending). Graduation before the Area Contest or Regional Contest does not affect eligibility. There can be more than one undergraduate student on the same nominated poster but only one of the students must be specified as the presenter or entrant by the local Student Branch or HKN Chapter. All of the authors of the nominated poster must be undergraduate students.

Subject: Posters must cover technical areas within the IEEE.  A nominated poster may address a course project, a senior design group project to which the entrant belongs, or an undergraduate research project to which the entrant belongs, in the fall semester of an academic year or in the spring/summer semester of the last academic year.

Contact Information: Contact your IEEE Student Branch or IEEE – Eta Kappa Nu Chapter; the Student Poster Competition Chair, Neill Kefauver; the IEEE Region 5 Conference Student Competitions Chair, Jim Sipes; or the Region 5 Student Activities Chair, Amardeep Kaur, for assistance in participating in this Competition.

B. Regional Contest

Venue: The Regional Contest is part of the annual Region 5 Conference in Denver, Colorado on April 22, 2023.

Entry: The top two winners from each Area are automatic qualifiers and are invited to compete during the annual Region 5 Conference. There are up to eight positions available to compete at the Region level during the annual Conference. Area third place winners may be considered to join the Region competition under agreement of the Area Chairs if any of these eight positions remain open. Following the Region competition, the top three presentations are recognized with a Region level monetary award.

Date: The eight entrants from the Area Contests need to mail or carry their posters and email presentation slides in PDF or PowerPoint format to the Region Contest Chair by the deadline date of March 25th, 2023.

Prizes: Region 5 provides $1500 prize money, allocated thusly (per poster, not per entrant): First Place, $800; Second Place $500, Third Place $200; plus, certificates (entrants) and inscribed plaques (entrants’ schools). The Region Contest Chair may offer additional prizes.

Expenses: The Region 5 Treasurer is to reimburse authorized conference expenses after receiving an entrant’s completed IEEE Regional Expense Report through IEEE Concur by the deadline of 15 days following the competition date. Expense reimbursement is limited to registration fee, two hotel nights at the site of the event, and travel to/from the event location for a single presenter per entry. See the “2023 Instructions to Area Winners.docx” for more information.

Registration: Each winner from an Area Competition that is invited to compete in the 2023 Region 5 Competition MUST Register for the Region 5 Conference. When you register, you will be asked whether you are a member of a team competing In a Student Competition; if so, which competition, and which Region 5 Area that you are representing.

Registration will be open until midnight MDT (Denver time), April 8, 2023.

C. Area Contest

Date: After approval, the IEEE Section Chair mails or carries the posters and emails the presentation slides received from its IEEE student branches and IEEE – Eta Kappa Nu chapters in PDF or PowerPoint format to the Area Contest Chair by the deadline date of January 15th, 2023. The Region Student Activity Chair oversees the area contests to ensure they are concluded by February 15th, 2023.

Entry:  The nominated posters passed to the IEEE Section Chair from the local Student Branches or Eta Kappa Nu Chapters need to be those already evaluated and graded to be top-ranked posters in an undergraduate engineering course or in an undergraduate competition.

Prizes: First, second, and third place winners receive $125, $100, and $75, respectively, plus certificates. The first and second place winners and possibly the third-place winners (see Regional Contest above for more detail) will be invited to compete in the Regional Contest. The Area Contest Chair may award additional prizes.

Area locations:

  • North Area: KS, MO, OK, and Southern IL.
  • West Area: CO, South WY, Southwest SD, West NB, West TX, and Southeast NM.
  • East Area: AR, LA, and East TX.
  • South Area: TX (except East & West TX).

D. Local Contest

Venue: The local Student Branch or Eta Kappa Nu Chapter selects and nominates one top-ranked Local Contest poster by sending the entrant or presenter’s name and the presentation slides in PDF or PowerPoint format via email and mailing or carrying the top-ranked poster to its IEEE Section Chair by December 15th, 2022. After examination and approval by the IEEE Section, the IEEE Section Chair mails or carries the top ranked Local Contest posters (entrants or presenters’ names, posters, and presentation slides in PDF or PowerPoint format) that are received from the student branches or Eta Kappa Nu chapters under that IEEE section to the Area Contest Chair by the deadline of January 15th, 2023.

Prizes: An IEEE Section funds its Local Contest prizes for all or some of the nominated top-ranked posters as deemed appropriate by that section. If the IEEE Section has its own established student competition, that competition can continue independent of the Region 5 student poster competition.

E. Contest Chairs

Appointments:

  • Area Chair serves as or appoints the Area Contest Chair by the deadline date of December 15th, 2022. The Area Contest Chair appoints judges by the deadline date of January 15th, 2023.
  • Region 5 Conference Chair serves as or appoints the Region Contest Chair in consultation with Region Student Activities Chair by the deadline date of September 1st, 2022. The Region Contest Chair appoints judges who will be attending the Region 5 Conference by the deadline date of March 1st, 2023.

Specific duties of Area and Region Contest Chairs:

  • Solicit and appoint judges (see section G).
  • Explain rules, judging procedure, and score sheet to judges (see section G).
  • Manage distribution of posters and presentation slides among judges.
  • Manage communication with the judges so that all questions, disqualification votes, etc., are handled through the Area/Region Competition Chair.
  • Enforce the rules.
  • Manage presentation or delivery of prizes, plaques, and certificates.
  • Promptly notify the entity Chair (Area Competition Chair notifies the Area Chair and Regional Competition Chair notifies the Region Conference Chair) and
  • Region Student Activities Chair of contest outcome.
  • Area Competition Chair Only – Sets up and moderates presentations by entrants preferably on a Saturday between January 20th, 2023 and February 15th, 2023.  Notifies the presenters of the results and the winners of their eligibility for the region contest.

Oral Presentations: The Area or Region Contest Chair

  • Briefly explain the rules at the start of the contest.
  • Introduce entrants before their respective presentations.
  • Fairly enforce the presentation rules.
  • Give judges 5 minutes time for Q/A and 5 minutes time after Q/A to complete their assessments.
  • Time presentations, Q/A, and assessments and terminate if going over the allocated time (allocated presentation time at Area Contest level is 10 minutes and allocated presentation time at Region Contest level is 15 minutes)
  • The Area Contest Chair Only – Sets up and moderates online meeting (e.g., WebEx, Zoom, or Teams) if necessary for presentations to be conducted by screen sharing to the judges.

F. Presentation Rules

  • Presentation slides not in PDF or PowerPoint format will be disqualified. Presentations without a title/author/affiliation slide and an originality/acknowledgements slide will be disqualified. The originality/acknowledgements slide should state the originality of the work, listing specific contributions of each author, and naming faculty advisor or mentor if any.
  • It is highly advised that the following key information are included in the presentations: introduction consisting of problem statement/objective/motivation, stating difference between work done and previous works, solution developed, results obtained, conclusion and references. Also, limiting text of slides to only a few words per line and no more than 5 bulleted items per slide and using graphics/pictures liberally will enhance the effectiveness of presentation slides.
  • It is the responsibility of presenters to match their number of slides with the allocated presentation time. Presentations will be terminated by the Area/Region Contest Chair when going over the allocated time even though the slides are not finished, and a 15-point penalty will be deducted from the score.
  • Only judges may ask questions and in the interest of fairness, judges will ask questions in the same category to all presenters with minimal deviation.

G. Guidelines and Criteria for Judges and Judging

Judges: The Area/Region Contest Chair identifies and appoints 3 to 5 judges who are either IEEE Senior Members or IEEE Fellows.

Judging Criteria: The criteria are listed on the score sheet provided by the Area/Region Contest Chair.

Winner selection: Based on the score sheet, each judge will give a score (100 points max) to a poster/presentation according to the criteria listed. The judges’ scores will be tallied, and the winners are determined by these tallies. Judges vote to break a tie.

Disqualifications: Only the Area/Region Contest Chair or the judges may report a disqualification issue (for only explicit reasons given in the rules). A majority vote of the judges will decide if a disqualification is warranted, and the Area/Region Contest Chair will break any tie vote on disqualification among the judges.

Judge Guidelines: Score each criterion on a 1 to 10 scale; scores of 2-4 weak, 5-7 normal, and 8-10 superior.

At oral presentations, judges should ask probing questions. Judges should add comments and constructive criticisms to score sheets to help presenters improve technical presentation skills. The judges’ scoring sheets should be provided to presenters once the contest is concluded.

H. Disputed Decisions

Presenters may dispute contest results for technical errors only (e.g., score sheet arithmetic or a time limit breach not reflected in scores). Absent any technical errors, the decision of the judges is final. Presenters may appeal (the judges’ response to a disputed decision) to the Area/Region Contest Chair. The decision of the Area/Region Contest Chair is final.

I. Judging Criteria

Each criterion listed on the score sheet is to be scored on a 1 to 10 scale: scores of 2-4 weak, 5-7 normal, and 8-10 superior.