A judging platform built to
work in 60+ countries.

The problem

Regeneron ISEF is the world's largest global science competition for high school students — researchers, judges, and mentors from 60+ countries all need to register, get judged, and showcase their work on one platform, in more than one language.

The constraints

• 60+ countries means real internationalization, not an afterthought bolted on at the end.
• The platform had to be stable for a fixed live competition window, with no soft-launch runway to iron out issues.
• Judges and visitors need to find a specific student's project inside the full competition roster, quickly.

The decisions

Built ISEF on the same platform investment shared across ProjectBoard's education clients (Vue.js, Firebase, Go, MySQL) rather than a bespoke stack per client — infrastructure work on one platform benefits every client sharing it. Added Algolia for fast project search across the competition roster, and built with i18n in from the start rather than retrofitting translations later. Used Cypress to cover the flows that fail loudest close to a live event date — registration and judging.

What shipped

The registration, judging, and showcase platform live at isef.net, supporting Regeneron ISEF's annual competition.

What's changed

Researchers, judges, and mentors from 60+ countries have run their registration and judging through this platform every competition cycle since launch, across a fixed live window with no soft-launch runway to fall back on. It's still live and in active use today.