Competitions

High School Research Competition

Important Links:

Submit your research poster here: 2025 High School Research Competition Submission Form

Thanks for corporate sponsors, NO REGISTRATION FEE for 2025 participants.

Online Info Session and Training on How to Prepare Poster: Sep 27, 2025 at 11 am. Info Session Registration Link

Online Training of How to Present Poster: Oct 11, 2025 at 11 am. Only for Accepted Poster Participants.

Competition Overview:

Cal Poly Pomona is excited to invite students from grades 9 through 12 to participate in the 2025 High School Research Competition, a dynamic opportunity to showcase original research, creativity, and innovation. This event will be held on Saturday, October 18, 2025, from 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM, and is open to students both in-person and online, making it accessible to participants from diverse locations.

The competition encourages young scholars to present their work in a research poster format, spanning across a wide range of disciplines. Students are welcome to submit research in computer science, engineering, physical sciences, health, biology, business, and the humanities. This broad scope reflects Cal Poly Pomona’s commitment to interdisciplinary learning and preparing future innovators for real-world challenges.

Participants will have the unique opportunity to present their research before a panel of College Faculty and Industry Professionals, gaining valuable feedback and exposure to academic and professional perspectives. Every project will be celebrated for its originality and effort, but outstanding submissions will be recognized with exciting awards.

Prizes and Recognition:
The top three posters will receive cash prizes as well as a Certificate of Recognition. In addition, winners will earn a special opportunity to tour Cal Poly Pomona’s Emerging Tech Lab, offering a first-hand look at the technologies shaping the future.

To join this competition, students must submit their posters by the deadline of Friday, October 10, 2025. Don’t miss this chance to share your work, develop presentation skills, and connect with experts in your field of interest. After the submission, the organizers will review the summary and based on the quality, will send acceptance notification by Oct 11, 2025. In the event that your poster is not accepted for presentation, the registration fees will be refunded.

Helpful links:

Guide to Write a Poster Abstract.
Poster Templates
Tips for Poster Design
Online option details: You will first submit the Wufoo form indicating the online option. Once you receive the acceptance email, then you will submit a 12-15 mins recorded video submission (there will be a workshop on Oct 11, 2025 on how to present). The judges will watch the video ahead of time and during the day of the competition (Oct 18, 2025), you will join via Zoom for 10 mins to answer any questions by the judges.

Capture the Flag (CTF)

Capture the Flag (CTF) is a special kind of information security competitions. There are three common types of CTFs: Jeopardy, Attack-Defense and mixed.

Jeopardy-style CTFs has a couple of questions (tasks) in range of categories. For example, Web, Forensic, Crypto, Binary or something else. Team can gain some points for every solved task. More points for more complicated tasks usually. The next task in chain can be opened only after some team solve previous task. Then the game time is over sum of points shows you a CTF winner. Famous example of such CTF is Defcon CTF quals.

Well, attack-defense is another interesting kind of competitions. Here every team has own network(or only one host) with vulnerable services. Your team has time for patching your services and developing exploits usually. So, then organizers connects participants of competition and the wargame starts! You should protect own services for defense points and hack opponents for attack points. Historically this is a first type of CTFs, everybody knows about DEF CON CTF - something like a World Cup of all other competitions.

CTF games often touch on many other aspects of information security: cryptography, stego, binary analysis, reverse engineering, mobile security and others. Good teams generally have strong skills and experience in all these issues.

To learn more visit: CTF Time

Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC)

CCDC is a two day event and the first competition that specifically focuses on the operational aspect of managing and protecting an existing "commercial" network infrastructure. Not only do students get a chance to test their knowledge in an operational environment, they have the opportunity to experience real time incident response.

To learn more visit: WRCCDC Official Site