Guides · ISEF category
Systems Software
ISEF category SOFT · difficulty for high-school students: high
Operating systems, compilers, programming languages, databases, distributed systems, networking, security, and core software infrastructure.
How it's judged
ISEF scores 100 points across five criteria:
- Creative Ability: 30 pts
- Scientific Thought: 30 pts
- Thoroughness: 15 pts
- Skill: 15 pts
- Clarity: 10 pts
What wins
- Novel compiler optimization with benchmarked performance improvement
- New data structure with proved asymptotic bounds + empirical validation
- Security vulnerability discovery and exploitation + patch in real software
- Novel distributed consensus protocol with formal correctness argument
- Database query optimizer improvement with reproducible benchmark comparison
Common mistakes
- Building a website and calling it systems research
- Performance benchmarks without statistical analysis (no error bars, no multiple trials)
- Claiming security improvements without an adversary model
- Not comparing to state-of-the-art baselines
What you'll need
Laptop with standard development tools. Server benchmarking may require cloud compute (free tiers available).
Ethics & approvals
Human-subjects (IRB) approval is usually not required for this category. Vertebrate-animal (IACUC) approval is usually not required.
The novelty bar
A provably better algorithm, a new system design, or a discovered security vulnerability. A well-built app without a research contribution is not competitive.
Build a competitive Systems Software project.
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