Digital and Regional Heats

How does it work?

Teams will join forces as fictional companies and spend a day preparing a presentation that showcases their design to meet the event’s Request for Proposal! All online! Any questions, get in touch with us by emailing [email protected] or via our socials.

For the 2021/2022 competition year, we’re continuing to run digital heats. These have largely replaced our regional heats, and allow us to deliver the same great competition in a COVID-secure way!

We are running one in-person event this year, in Eastbourne in order to test the procedures that we have planned for our National Finals in March. This event will be by invitation only. If you would like to help us prepare for the return to normality, please email [email protected].

Registration for Autumn 2021 Heats is now open!

6th November 2021 (Eastbourne)

13th November 2021 (Online)

20th November 2021 (Online)

27th November 2021 (Online)

4th December 2021 (Online)

11th December 2021 (Croydon)
Register

The Rules of Entry

  1. Teams may consist of between 4 and 12 students, all between Years 10 and 13 (in England/Wales, or equivalent elsewhere in the United Kingdom).
  2. Teams who are not successful in the digital heats are permitted to place an additional entry to UKSDC via the video competition.
  3. Each team must have a designated supervising adult (over the age of 18). This is usually a teacher (in the case that a team’s affiliated organisation is a school).
  4. Registration of a team using the provided form indicates permission has been given by a parent/guardian for a team member to participate.
  5. Only one team may be associated with an institution in order to give as many people the opportunity to get involved as possible. If you are interested in registering a second team, please contact [email protected] directly. Should additional space become available, interested parties will be contacted on a first-come, first-served basis.

Register for 2021 Digital Heats

If you would like to register for our Digital Heats this year, please fill in the following form as early as you can to ensure that you get a place. Please see the section below the form for justification of the data that we request for registration.

All contact information given during registration is destroyed at the end of the Digital Heats unless your team succeeds in qualifying for the National Finals in March. Contact information for the National Finals will be destroyed following that event. The information that we ask for is key to ensuring the smooth-running and universal enjoyment of the competition.

  1. Your affiliated institution is either your school or science club. This is how you will be identified  in our internal media and announcements. We require this so that we can announce who has won! Please do not use a team name unless you are an independent group.
  2. Institution type allows us to monitor our outreach, and to ensure that independent teams receive any additional organisational support that they require.
  3. We require a supervising adult at our Digital Heats as an individual better able to assist with any non-competition difficulties that students may face. A supervising adult will be required to accompany students to the National Finals, should they progress. This person can be changed before the National Finals, if necessary.
  4. We require the supervising adult’s contact email address to keep them and the team up to date about the Heat that they are attending and supply you with materials critical to your event.
  5. We request a contact phone number for the supervising adult, especially for digital competitions, as this reduces the burden on them to be online for the entire duration of the event. At a physical competition, this allows us to find you should one of your students need your help.
  6. We are optionally introducing a ‘Competitor Contact’ scheme this year, so that a team member can take the burden of any administration off of the responsible adult. This ensures that a team member can distribute information and documents to the team. Should this individual respond to our questions, we will ensure to copy the supervising adult into all communications.
  7. As you will be asked to work with other teams in a ‘company’, we need to be able to ensure that companies are well-balanced. To do this, we need to know how many students are in your team!
  8. We need to know which of our events you’d like to attend! We use a preference system for our Digital Heats, as it allows us to ensure that the quality of our events and of the competition at our events is as high as possible.
  9. At the National Finals, we will take photos for use in our media. We ask for your consent to this. We will not take photos at digital events, however we reserve the right to use any images in your submitted work in SSEF-affiliated media.