Does Your Student Need a Research Mentor for STS or ISEF?

By Dr. Harman Brah, MD · Judge, California Science & Engineering Fair

Not every student needs a paid research mentor. Some have a teacher who knows the fair system, a question they already own, and the discipline to run it. For those students, a mentor adds little.

Most students are not in that position. They have an interest but no question yet, no idea which fair rules apply to them, and no one who has sat on the judge’s side of the table. That is the gap a good mentor fills.

What a mentor should do

A good mentor works like a guardrail, not a director:

• helps the student turn an interest into one testable question
• makes sure the project clears pre-approval rules before any data is collected
• pushes on controls and statistics, where most projects lose points
• prepares the student to defend the work at the board, without a script

What a mentor should never do

A mentor should never choose the result, write the paper or build the project. The rules make this concrete. Regeneron STS accepts only independent, individual research, judges assess whether lab work is substantially the student’s own, and entrants and mentors must disclose participation in paid programs.

That disclosure rule is useful to parents. Any program you pay should be comfortable with the judges knowing exactly what it did.

Questions to ask before you pay anyone

Who, by name, will mentor my student? A typical research program lists “PhD mentors” without names. You should know exactly who is guiding the work and what their background is.

What is the price, and what does it cover? If the price only appears after a sales call, ask why.

Have your mentors judged a science fair? Knowing how projects are scored changes how they are built.

Which fair is this project for, and what are its deadlines? A mentor who cannot name your county fair date and its pre-approval deadline is selling a generic timeline.

Who writes the paper? The only acceptable answer is the student.

Do you promise a publication or a placement? No honest program can. Treat a guarantee as a warning.

How we work

We publish our mentors and our price. Dr. Harman Brah is a physician and a judge at the California Science & Engineering Fair. Wesley Hatcher, PhD, is an organic chemist at UC San Diego and an NSF Graduate Research Fellow who has directed research mentorship for more than 100 UCSD undergraduates.

We plan around the real Bay Area calendar: the Synopsys Championship, the Alameda County fair, the San Mateo County STEM Fair, the state fair and Regeneron STS. Bench work is possible too. One of our mentees ran his STS project at BioCurious, a community lab in Santa Clara.

Our students have been Regeneron STS and ISEF semifinalists and category award winners. Most recently, Prajval and Bhuvan won 1st place at the Alameda County fair, 3rd at the California state fair, and the Best Ethical Research Poster Award at the BMES Annual Meeting. The work was theirs from the first question to the final poster.

See our research mentorship tracks and the 2026-27 fair calendar.

FAQ

Is paid research mentorship allowed for Regeneron STS?

Yes, but entrants and mentors must disclose participation in paid programs, and the research must be substantially the student’s own.

What should a science fair mentor do?

Help the student find one testable question, clear pre-approval rules, strengthen controls and statistics, and prepare to defend the work. The student does the research and writes the paper.

Can a mentor guarantee an ISEF placement or a publication?

No. No honest program can guarantee a placement or a publication.

Does my student need a university lab for a strong project?

No. Strong projects can be computational, field-based or run in a community lab. One of our mentees ran his STS project at BioCurious in Santa Clara.