Through judging, project mentorship and hands-on lab tours, UCSB faculty and graduate researchers are helping local students connect classroom curiosity with scientific discovery.
When the 2026 Santa Barbara County Science and Engineering Fair took place March 13 at UC Santa Barbara’s Corwin Pavilion, the room carried the familiar signs of student research: trifold display boards, charts, carefully rehearsed explanations and the nervous energy of middle and high school students presenting their work.
Behind the projects was another part of the day’s story: UC Santa Barbara faculty members and graduate researchers helping young scientists imagine what comes next.
UCSB’s involvement went beyond providing a venue. Researchers served as judges, opened their labs for hands-on tours and mentored student projects, connecting local students with research that usually happens behind laboratory doors.
For students, those interactions can help transform a school project into something larger, said Kim Miller, president of the Santa Barbara County Science and Engineering Fair.
“The scientists are able to add breadth and depth to the students’ understanding, sharing ideas for improvement on experimental design, statistical interpretation of results, and broader implications and applications of the topic of study,” Miller said. “The most important value for students, though, is the confidence gained by pursuing original research inspired by independent investigation, and having that work taken seriously by professionals.”
The power of representation in the lab
For Emily Gemmill, a graduate researcher at UC Santa Barbara, mentoring a local student was a chance to offer the kind of guidance that can keep young people engaged in science., a graduate researcher at UC Santa Barbara, mentoring a local student was a chance to offer the kind of guidance that can keep young people engaged in science.
Gemmill worked with Seungyoo Kim-Jung, a Dos Pueblos High School student, on a computational biology project focused on macrophages, immune cells sometimes described as the body’s “super eaters” because they engulf target cells, including cancer cells.
The lab generates large volumes of microscopy data as researchers study how macrophages interact with target cells. Historically, measuring how much the macrophages eat has required time-consuming manual counts. Kim-Jung’s project explored a way to automate that process.
“Her project specifically was figuring out a way of automating this,” Gemmill said. “How can we segment the cells that are eating and the cells that are being eaten, and then how can we find the overlap between those to find where the macrophages have eaten?”
Gemmill said Kim-Jung was self-motivated, taking the initial project map and returning each week with significant progress. As the project developed, she said, the student’s questions moved beyond the computational task to the biology behind it.
“As we worked on her poster, she asked more questions about, like, what are macrophages? What are they eating? How do they eat?” Gemmill said. “She became much more interested in the basic science, which was really rewarding.”
That shift, Gemmill said, is one reason outreach matters. Mentorship can be especially important for young women and students from underrepresented groups, she said.
“Having role models is really, really important in mentorship,” Gemmill said. “It just gets them thinking about, like, ‘Oh, this is something that I could do as a career.’”
Opening doors to virtual worlds
The mentorship continued after the morning judging sessions, when students visited UCSB labs for an afternoon of tours and demonstrations.
At the Research Center for Virtual Environments and Behavior, researchers Mable Zhou and Apurv Varshney led students through virtual reality demonstrations designed to show how psychological and vision science research is conducted.
Zhou guided students through a virtual reality fire extinguisher search game. Students wore a head-mounted display to study a top-down map, then walked and navigated a virtual environment, using a controller to interact with it and find the extinguisher. Some students completed trials in which the map accurately identified the extinguisher’s location, while others encountered maps that were inaccurate. Afterward, the group discussed map reliability, probability and how the virtual reality task was programmed.
“Having the chance to see the research process and understand what it means to conduct scientific psychological research at an early stage can help cultivate students’ interest and have a lasting impact,” Zhou said. “The earlier this kind of experience begins, the deeper the root it can set.”
Varshney demonstrated the lab’s BionicVisionXR Simulator, an open-source virtual reality toolbox developed to study future approaches to sight restoration. Visual prostheses, sometimes called bionic eyes, aim to restore a limited form of vision by translating camera or sensor input into patterns of neural stimulation. Because artificial vision can be blurry, distorted or difficult to interpret, BionicVisionXR allows researchers to test how different prosthetic-vision strategies might support real-world tasks such as finding objects, navigating spaces or recognizing hazards. The demonstration gave students a firsthand look at both the premise and the scientific challenges of restoring useful sight.
“If I got such a chance as a student, I would have been introduced to research earlier, and maybe would have known that I had a passion for research earlier,” Varshney said. “Such experiences can shape your thinking in unique ways and help you find your passion.”
A two-way street
Although the science fair is designed to encourage K-12 students, UCSB’s outreach also offers benefits for the university volunteers who take part.
David Sherman, a professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, has volunteered for more than a decade, using his expertise to evaluate student protocols involving human participants.
“Each year it is so rewarding to see the collaboration between students, teachers, the judges and the university scientists, all facilitated by a volunteer team that organizes the event,” Sherman said. “The science fair provides a super opportunity to support young science students exploring their own questions and communicating their findings to each other and the community.”
For graduate students, the experience also builds teaching and mentoring skills.
“I’ve mentored undergrads and a high school student, and it’s really rewarding in that I get that experience in teaching someone else and managing people,” Gemmill said. “I think it’s a really important skill for all grad students.”
By making research visible — and letting students try it for themselves — UCSB mentors helped turn a one-day science fair into something larger: a glimpse of the next generation of scientists taking shape.
Photos courtesy of the Santa Barbara County Science and Engineering Fair.