The Robogals Science Challenge was a new Robogals initiative in 2011. It is an Australia-wide competition for girls aged 5-18, together with a parent or mentor. The entrants did a science experiment at home, and then submitted a video of their experiment online! Judging criteria includes the difficulty and creativity of the experiment, and a demonstrated understanding of the theory behind the project. The entrants were split into three age groups: Primary (5-8), Intermediate (9-12) and Senior (13-18) and judged by Bernie Hobbs, Sally Dominguez and Veena Sahajwalla, all regular panelists on the ABC’s New Inventors, and Dr. Alberto Elfes from CSIRO.

All the finalists in the Challenge were invited to a weekend in Melbourne on 3 and 4 December, flights and accommodation courtesy of GE Energy, to attend the award ceremony as well as some science-related attractions!

The weekend kicked off with the finalists and their guests being greeted at the hotel, and escorted on the tram to GE Headquarters where they were met at the tram stop by two robots! After a nice informal lunch where all the finalists were able to get to know each other, the award ceremony began, MC'ed by one of the judges, Sally Dominguez. After a brief introduction to Robogals, the audience enjoyed watching all the finalists’ videos, followed by the judges' comments. And then finally, the winners were announced! See at the end of this article for their videos.

The finalists and guests then returned to the hotel for a short rest before embarking on a brief walking tour of Melbourne, including a visit to the viewing deck of the Eureka Tower. Finally, we had a banquet dinner, also sponsored by GE, at the Shark Fin Inn in Chinatown.

On Sunday morning we were up early to visit the Melbourne Aquarium! We stayed at the Aquarium for about two hours, enjoying such sights as the penguins, the tropical coral atoll, “weird & wonderful” tank and shark tank. After a quick lunch nearby, we headed to the final activity of the weekend: a visit to ScienceWorks where we saw the current special exhibition, Explore-a-saurus, as well as our guests being free to explore all the regular exhibitions.

The inaugural Robogals Science Challenge was the beginning of an annual competition that we hope to see grow in the years to come. From 2012 onwards, the Science Challenge is set to be much more engineering-oriented, with the entrants encouraged to demonstrate the practical application of science to solve problems faced in their daily lives (i.e. what engineers do), as well as discipline-specific prizes for the various disciplines of engineering.

Robogals would like to thank the following people for their amazing support:

• Mun-Xin Lee, Science Challenge Manager, for her excellent work in bringing the Challenge to fruition
• All the girls and their parents who entered the Challenge!
• GE Energy, particularly Andrea Boyle, for making the Science Challenge possible
• The other sponsors who donated prizes: Science Illustrated, ScienceWise and COSMOS Magazines. And Joanne Chan for arranging all the amazing prizes!
• David Lee for his great work in promoting the Challenge
• The judges Bernie Hobbs, Sally Dominguez, Veena Sahajwalla and Alberto Elfes.
• All the volunteers who helped on the day of the award ceremony: Shu Jie Lam, Makiko Nagasawa, Kelly Chiu and Shane Lyndon, of whom the latter two even dressed up as robots in the sweltering heat!
• Tim Macauley for being our official photographer for the award ceremony.
• Jia Choong for interviewing the winners.

The winning entries:

Primary Category
1st: Marianne Hanna
2nd: Sophie Douglas
3rd: Saskia Horgan-Catchpole
Crowd Favourite: Marianne Hanna

Intermediate Category
1st: Alexandra Karamesinis
2nd: Nikita Smith
3rd: Kyra Zovak
Crowd Favourite: Isobel Hall

Senior Category
1st: Yaya Lu
2nd: Joanna Shepherd
3rd: Natalie Dickins
Crowd Favourite: Natalie Dickins