Judging and Poster Guidelines

• Title text should be bold, approximately 1 to 1.25 inches high (100 to 125 points); names and affiliations in bold, approximately 0.75 inches high (65 to 85 points). We recommend using a simple, sans-serif font like Arial or Helvetica for titles.
• Headings should be bold, 20 to 48 points high, so that they stand out from the body text. Using a contrasting color for headings tends to look good.
• Body text should be 18 to 24 points high, in a basic, legible font like Times New Roman, Arial, or Helvetica. Where body text is used at a small size, use a sans-serif font like Arial or Helvetica so that it is more readable. It may even be necessary to make very small text bold.
• Figure legends can be in the same size as the body text, or slightly smaller (14 to 18 points). The title of the figure should be bold.
• Posters should be developed in Microsoft PowerPoint and saved as the appropriate file size.
• Digital PowerPoint slide should be saved as a PDF prior to uploading via registration.

• Is the hypothesis or the problem clearly stated and easily understood?
• Is the project innovative or does it look at a question in a new way?
• Does it represent new/novel technology or a new application of existing technology to the hypothesis?

Experimental Quality

• Are the experimental design and methods appropriate to the objective?
• Are the results meaningful and relevant?
• Do the conclusions adequately and concisely interpret the results?

Display Attributes

• Lettering size and quality: Can the information/data flow be easily followed? Is there too much text?
• Tables/figures/photos: Should be simple in design for clear and quick understanding. What is represented should be identified.
• Use of color: Provide credit if the color adds value to the poster.

Overall Poster Quality and Presentation

• Is the poster neat, attractive, and informative?
• Is the research concept adaptable to the poster style?
• Are the main conclusions obvious after a short scan of the poster?
• Is the poster self‐explanatory? It should not contain any unfamiliar terms that need interpretation.
• Organization: The poster display should be well organized and clearly show the flow of presentation either by using appropriate headings (methods, results, and conclusions) or by the use of arrows or connecting lines.