Caltech Students Host Science Olympiad State Tournament

In the middle-school competition, the team from Irvine’s Sierra Vista Middle School took first place and advanced to the 2026 national competition at USC in May.
Credit: Ryan Wong

More than 2,000 students, teachers, and volunteers took part in the 2026 Southern California Science Olympiad State Tournament, hosted at Caltech and Polytechnic School in April. Organized nationwide, Science Olympiad competitions test teams of middle and high school students on their STEM knowledge and abilities.

2026 marked the 11th year that Caltech has hosted the state tournament, with Caltech students setting up, supervising, and scoring challenges on 23 STEM topics for 64 teams from across Southern California.

Undergraduates Edward Zhang and Jinhuang (Jin) Zhou, co-presidents of the Caltech Science Olympiad Alumni Chapter, led the effort. It brought together 150 volunteers from universities across Southern California including UCLA, USC, UC Irvine, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, and Caltech.

The Caltech chapter’s planning spanned a full year, required management of spaces in more than a dozen buildings, and involved collaborations with the nonprofit Caltech Y and 15 Caltech departments.*

Peter Hung (BS ’08, PhD ’16) founded the Institute’s chapter in 2004. Since then Caltech students have shaped the tournaments nationwide. Caltech began hosting the Southern California state tournament in 2016, helping popularize the idea of tournaments at universities. Chapter members have also helped students at MIT, Duke, UCLA, and other universities begin their own alumni chapters.

Caltech hosted the national tournament in 2022, and the Institute’s chapter regularly supports workshops, practices, and competitions.

Like most club volunteers, Hung, Zhang, and Zhou had formative experiences in Science Olympiad and want to give back. Today, Hung, who works for The Aerospace Corporation, is the Southern California Science Olympiad state director and serves on the organization’s national executive board.

Each year, officials honor participants by visiting the event. In 2026, US Representative Judy Chu, Pasadena Mayor Victor Gordo, and Pasadena City Councilmember Jason Lyon, whose district includes Caltech, visited to encourage the young competitors and highlight the importance of STEM.

*Organizers thank the Caltech departments that collaborated on the event: the President’s Office, Communications and External Relations; Security; Dining; Facilities; the Caltech Store; Admissions; Student Affairs; the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Outreach; the Caltech Alumni Association; Caltech Athletics; the Resnick Sustainability Institute; LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory); and the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter.