THE STEM JOURNEY | September 2026
Your monthly connection to youth STEM in Canada
School is back, which means STEM fair season is back, and we can already feel the buzz of curiosity and ideation coursing across the country. Right now, somewhere in the country, a student is describing an idea to a friend for the first time. Regional fair committees are booking venues, sorting out dates, and starting the long work of finding enough judges for February and March. None of it looks like a science fair yet, but it’s coming!
If you’re the student with the half-formed idea, the question you’re probably asking is whether it’s good enough. Janelle Salm’s answer, thirteen years on from her own first CWSF, is that you’re asking about the wrong thing.
The project isn’t the part that lasts
In grade nine, Janelle turned her brother’s closet into a lab (she wasn’t about to use her own obviously!). Muffin pan trays lined with yeast samples. Pieces of coloured glass rigged to different light sources. She was already a baker, so she got curious about the organism she used in her own kitchen and picked a question she could actually test at home.
It got her to the 2013 Canada-Wide Science Fair in Lethbridge, where she walked the floor watching sixteen-year-olds present work on fighting cancer and thought: I guess not everybody is doing yeast cells in muffin tins.
She’s not a yeast biologist now. She went to UBC for accounting, joined KPMG, and is today ESG Controller at Mercer, a global forestry company, where she oversees greenhouse gas reporting and spent much of the past year working out how to account for the carbon stored in living forests. Nothing about that job relates to her project from all those years ago.
What she’s glad to have learned is everything the project made her practise: building a method, sitting with uncertainty, and explaining complicated work to people who don’t already understand it. And most importantly, she met her people.
You’re kind of a little fish when you grow up in a small town, and you might be one of only a few people who find science cool. And then, suddenly, you’re around all these others who just get you. It’s a breath of fresh air. There’s a whole world for us out here.
What’s Happening at YSC
A new Executive Director
Our Board of Directors has appointed Alexandra Fenton as YSC’s next Executive Director, effective October 15. She joins us from SuperNOVA at Dalhousie University, where, over ten years, she grew barrier-free STEM programming across Atlantic Canada from a one-person operation into a team of 12 full-time and 40 seasonal staff, reaching more than 16,000 young people last year. Welcome to the team!
Your regional fair wants your help
Fairs run February through April, but committees are organizing this fall. They need judges, mentors, and organizers, and you don’t necessarily need to be a scientist.
What’s Happening This Month
Upcoming Opportunities
- Girls ENG Bootcamp (September 19, Oshawa): A day of electrical and nuclear engineering workshops for girls in grades 9–10 at Ontario Tech. Register
- Secure Games: Cybersafe Worlds (September 26, Vancouver): A free family event at UBC. Youth work through game design while parents dig into online safety. Register
- 2027 Loran Award (October 15, National): Up to 160 financial awards for 2027 graduating high school students to attend university. Learn more
See all opportunities for more details
Worth Your Time
- Moroti Adegboyega, a 17-year-old from St. John’s and CWSF alum, won the 2026 Stockholm Junior Water Prize for a robot that uses AI and a magnetic liquid to pull plastic out of water without harming marine life. He was chosen from national winners representing more than 40 countries.
- A 64-year-old man from the Gaspé became the first person in North America to receive a liver repaired by machine before transplant. The CHUM team estimates the technology could make 20 to 24 additional livers usable in its first year alone.
- NSERC’s Science Exposed gallery collects images from Canadian research: Arctic ice cores pulled up under the midnight sun, a sea pen that may be a species new to science, a Dungeness crab you would never recognize as one. Public voting for the People’s Choice award is now open.
This Month’s Thought
A project you finish in grade nine is not a career plan, and it was never supposed to be. It’s a few months of practice at doing something carefully and then explaining it to a stranger. That turns out to be most jobs.
The season starts now. Pick something. You’ve got this!
— Stuart
P.S. If you’ve been meaning to volunteer at your regional fair and never got around to it, this is the month to do so!