Canada's brightest come to Regina: Canada-Wide Science Fair opens to the public

Over 400 science students from across Canada have arrived in the Queen City this week for the country's most prestigious youth science fair.

The Canada-Wide Science Fair, happening at the University of Regina, features projects from 101 regions across the country.

Every province and territory in Canada is represented by students ranging from Grade 7 to 12.

A total of 33 students from 10 different regions across Saskatchewan are participating in the week-long event at the U of R.

Grade 9 student Tyson Anderson, from Swift Current, Sask., was surprised to be selected for the fair.

"We didn't know at first [because] we got third, but the second people dropped out so we knew we got [to move] on," said Anderson.

"So that was pretty exciting," he said.

Carnduff, Sask., student Claire Larson, who attended last year's CWSF in Montreal, Que., said her project this year is focused on the medical field.

"We worked with Alzheimer's patients," said Larson.

"We wanted to find a trend in our results to help diagnose early onset Alzheimer's."

The science fair opens to the public Thursday and runs until Saturday.

Members of the public can observe and interact with the finalists throughout the fair and even participate in a few special workshops that are taking place at the university.

According to Patrick Kossmann, who heads up the CWSF host committee, there are a lot of activities on site.

"The two additional gyms on campus are being used to house the STEAM [science, technology, engineering and math] conference," said Kossmann.

"There's over 70 booths set up to demonstrate hands-on science and people are welcome to tour that event and take part," he said.