Singapore's Young Research Talents Clinch 7 Awards at International Science and Engineering Fair 2026

1. Eight Singapore students competed against more than 1,700 students from about 60 countries, regions, and territories at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF)¹ 2026, where they clinched a total of seven awards. Singapore has participated in ISEF annually since 2001.

2. In total, four individual projects and two team projects² were submitted to the ISEF, which was held in Phoenix, Arizona, USA from 9 to 15 May 2026. Through the competition, our students exchanged insights with young scientists from around the world and gained valuable learning experiences.

3. Our students demonstrated their innovation and problem-solving skills by leveraging STEM concepts through research to tackle practical, real-world problems. Ms Ge Jingyi from Raffles Institution explored the use of natural biological carriers alongside modern gene therapies to develop safer and more effective next-generation cancer treatments. Mr Caelen Chang Kai Mun and Mr Javier Ng Wei Quan from Hwa Chong Institution developed a method to streamline Polymerase Chain Reaction workflows to improve the accessibility of genetic sequencing across clinical, field and laboratory settings.

4. The Ministry of Education (MOE), the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), and Science Centre Singapore commend all our Singapore participants on their active participation and strong performance at this year's fair. The award-winning projects are as follows (details in Annex A):

Grand Awards³

Award Title	Student(s)	Project Title
Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Category: Second Award	Austin Liu Zi Rui	Beating the Odds in Drug Discovery With 3DICE: Interpretable 3D Cross-Modal Learning for Drug–Target Interaction Prediction at Scale
Materials Science Category: Second Award	Ge Jingyi	Optimizing Bacterial Outer Membrane Vesicles (OMVs) for mRNA-Based Immunogene Therapy
Mathematics Category: Third Award	Ying Liqian	Complexity Functions Are All You Need
Robotics and Intelligent Machines Category: Third Award	Tan Min Sen Zachary Choy Kit Chun	Keep Your Data Close, but Your Failures Closer: Failure-Driven Adversarial Self-Evolution of Language Models

Special Awards⁴

Award Title	Student(s)	Project Title
Association for Computing Machinery Award (Second Award)	Tan Min Sen Zachary Choy Kit Chun	Keep Your Data Close, but Your Failures Closer: Failure Driven Adversarial Self-Evolution of Language Models
Society for Science Alumni Special Award	Caelen Chang Kai Mun Javier Ng Wei Quan	SNIPER: Long-Target Isothermal DNA Amplification
American Mathematical Society Award (Honorable Mention)	Ying Liqian	Complexity Functions Are All You Need

Footnotes

1. Regeneron ISEF is one of the world's largest annual pre-college science fairs that provides a platform for top science and engineering talents to showcase their projects. For more information on the Regeneron ISEF, please refer to https://www.societyforscience.org/isef.
2. The ISEF student delegates were selected based on their outstanding performance and projects presented at the Singapore Science and Engineering Fair (SSEF) 2026 held in March 2026. SSEF is a national competition jointly organised by MOE, A*STAR, and Science Centre Singapore.
3. Grand Awards are given out by the organisers of the Regeneron ISEF, Society for Science, to top-performing projects from each project category in the competition. There is a total of 22 project categories in ISEF 2026. The full list of Grand Awards given out in ISEF 2026 can be found at: Full Awards: Teen Scientists Win More Than $7 Million at 76th Annual Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair
4. Special Awards are given out by professional organisations representing government, industry, and education across a wide variety of scientific disciplines, who are affiliated with Regeneron ISEF. The full list of Special Awards given out in ISEF 2026 can be found at: Regeneron ISEF 2026 Special Awards