Andrei Florian: The Dublin Student Who Won ISEF 2022

Biography

The prize in Atlanta

The Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair ran from 7 to 13 May 2022 in Atlanta, Georgia, in a hybrid form that mixed a physical event with virtual participation. Silicon Republic reported on 19 May that Florian, then in fifth year at St Aidan's CBS in Dublin, had taken the first prize in software systems, one of roughly a score of judged categories.

Two figures give the result its weight. He was ranked above 58 other finalists inside his own category, each of whom had already won a regional or national fair to be there at all. And the fair as a whole distributed approximately $8 million in awards and scholarships, which makes it the largest pre-university science competition in the world by prize money. His own haul was reported at $10,000, combining the category prize with an Oracle Academy award.

What he built

The project was a digital voting system built on a blockchain: an attempt to make internet voting auditable by writing ballots to a distributed ledger that no single administrator controls. Electronic voting is one of the genuinely unsolved problems in applied computer science, because the two requirements pull against each other. A voter must be able to verify that a ballot was counted, and nobody must be able to prove how any individual voted.

Florian framed the work as electoral reform rather than a technical exercise. I am passionate about electoral reform, he said, and over the past few months designed and developed a novel internet voting system. He added a line of thanks to family, friends and teachers, and to the BT Young Scientist exhibition for giving him the opportunity. Silicon Republic does not print a project name, nor the detail of which consensus mechanism or cryptographic scheme the system used.

From the RDS to Georgia

The route to Atlanta ran through Dublin. Florian was a top-four finalist at the 2022 BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition, the national competition held each January, and it was that exhibition, in his own account, that sent him forward to the international fair.

The pipeline is the point. ISEF does not accept direct entries; a student arrives as the representative of an affiliated fair, which in Ireland means the BT exhibition. A national placing that looks modest from the outside, fourth rather than first, was enough to put an Irish sixteen- or seventeen-year-old in front of an international jury and then above 58 of them.

What ISEF is

ISEF is run by Society for Science, the Washington non-profit that has organised it for more than seventy years and that also runs the Regeneron Science Talent Search. Finalists are secondary school students who have won affiliated fairs in their own countries; they present a year of work to panels of professional scientists and engineers, and are judged within a category rather than against the whole field.

For Ireland the fair has an outsized symbolic weight. The country sends a small delegation against the enormous American and Chinese contingents, and a category win is reported nationally when it happens. Silicon Republic's account of 2022 details one Irish success: Florian's.

What is documented, and what is not

Firm: Florian was a fifth-year student at St Aidan's CBS in Dublin; he won the top software systems prize at Regeneron ISEF 2022 for a blockchain-based internet voting system; the award was reported as $10,000 including an Oracle Academy prize; he beat 58 other entries in his category; he had been a top-four finalist at BT Young Scientist 2022.

Not documented: his birth year or exact age, the name of the project, the technical design of the voting system, whether the system was ever tested in a real election, and what he has studied or built since 2022. A fifth-year student in the Irish system is typically sixteen or seventeen, but the source does not state his age and this page will not invent one.

Achievement Timeline

Andrei Florian — every milestone on this page, in order.

Jan 2022

Finishes in the top four at the BT YouFinishes in the top four at the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition in Dublin

7-13 May 2022

Competes at Regeneron ISEF in Atlanta,Competes at Regeneron ISEF in Atlanta, Georgia, held in hybrid form

May 2022

Wins the software systems category, ahWins the software systems category, ahead of 58 other entries, and an Oracle Academy award

19 May 2022

Silicon Republic reports the win and qSilicon Republic reports the win and quotes him on electoral reform

Watch: Andrei Florian on camera

SafeFiler, by Andrei FlorianAndrei Florian

Historical Comparison

Person	Country	Milestone	Age / Stat
Lauren Hodge	United States	Winning the 13-14 age category of the first Google Science Fair, in 2011…	Age 14
Sophie Healy-Thow	Ireland	Co-winning the Google Science Fair grand prize in 2014	Age 16
Andrei Florian	Ireland	Top software systems prize, Regeneron ISEF 2022	—
Viney Kumar	Australia	Winner, 13-14 category, Google Science Fair 2013	—
Calvin Rieder	Canada	2015 Google Science Fair global finalist	—

What is documented — and what is not

✓ Documented

Won the software systems top prize at Regeneron ISEF 2022 for a blockchain internet voting system
Fifth-year student at St Aidan's CBS, Dublin
Reported award of $10,000 including an Oracle Academy prize
Top-four finalist at BT Young Scientist 2022

? Unverified, disputed or wrong

Age and birth year are not stated in the source
The project has no published name or technical description
Nothing is published about his studies or work after May 2022

Questions people ask about Andrei Florian

What did Andrei Florian win?

The top prize in the software systems category at Regeneron ISEF 2022, plus an Oracle Academy award, reported together as $10,000.

What was his project?

A blockchain-based internet voting system. Silicon Republic describes it as a novel internet voting system built around blockchain, but gives no project name or technical specification.

How old is Andrei Florian?

No source consulted gives his age or birth year. He was a fifth-year secondary student in May 2022.

How many competitors did he beat?

Fifty-eight other entries in his category, according to Silicon Republic. The fair as a whole awarded about $8 million in prizes and scholarships that year.