Tech
Galaxy
Award
tga.org
Eight ways
to be brilliant.
A single trophy cannot capture what happens at TGA. Some teams arrive with one student who carries the room; others have eight quieter voices whose integration is the real achievement. Some projects are technically dazzling; others are quietly ethical. We honor all of these — distinctly.
The TGA Galaxy is engineered around a simple belief: excellence in tech is not one thing, and recognition should not pretend that it is. Every cohort produces a unique constellation. Every constellation has many stars.
01 · The brightest star
Polaris Award
The single most rigorous, original, and ethically grounded project of the year. Polaris is not awarded each cohort by default — the judging panel may choose to leave the sky unmarked if no submission meets the standard. When awarded, it is the highest honor TGA confers.
- Recognition: Singular · once per year at most
- Conferred by: Full judging panel, unanimous
- Honor: Polaris Laureate · permanent record
02 · The team that guided the year
North Star
The champion team. The cohort that best embodied TGA's vision of justice, rigor, and design — the team future cohorts will study. Unlike Polaris (a singular project), North Star recognizes the team as a whole: how its members worked together, defended each other's logic, and rose to the challenge over seven days.
- Recognition: One team per cohort
- Conferred by: Judging panel + faculty mentors
- Honor: Featured in TGA Yearbook
03 · The unexpected arc
Rising Star
For the participant who arrived quietly and left a mark. Rising Star recognizes the steepest growth over the seven days — a student who, by their final defense, was operating at a level no one (sometimes including themselves) anticipated on day one. Awarded individually, not by team.
- Recognition: Up to three per cohort
- Conferred by: Faculty mentors who tracked the cohort
- Honor: Individual citation in TGA record
04 · The thinking judges did not expect
Supernova
For the project that disrupted the room — a framing, a method, or a conclusion the panel did not anticipate, backed by reasoning rigorous enough to survive a three-minute defense. Supernova is not awarded for novelty alone. The disruption must be defensible.
- Recognition: One project per cohort
- Conferred by: Judging panel
- Honor: Published case study
05 · Two minds, one orbit
Binary Star
For the pair within a team whose collaboration produced more than the sum of its parts. Binary Star recognizes the partnership — often two students with different temperaments or skill sets — whose mutual challenge sharpened the whole project. The award is conferred to both as a single citation.
- Recognition: One pair per cohort
- Conferred by: Mentors + peer nomination
- Honor: Joint citation in TGA record
06 · Every member essential
Constellation
The team whose role design and integration were textbook — eight members, eight distinct contributions, no shadow players. Constellation is the antidote to the "two stars carry the rest" failure mode. It rewards the team that did the harder thing: distributing visibility evenly without diluting rigor.
- Recognition: One team per cohort
- Conferred by: Faculty mentors
- Honor: Featured in TGA Yearbook
07 · The project that made us pause
Stardust
For the project whose imagination, language, or visual identity reframed how the room thought about the problem. Stardust is less about technical rigor and more about communicative grace — the team that made AI feel human again. We give it because the future of tech is also a future of meaning.
- Recognition: One project per cohort
- Conferred by: Judging panel
- Honor: Showcased in TGA closing keynote
08 · The gravity behind every star
Galaxy Mentor
The teacher, advisor, or coach behind a team that demonstrably elevated their thinking. Galaxy Mentor recognizes the adult who prepared their students to defend, not just to present — to argue, not just to recite. The award is conferred by the participating students themselves, by anonymous nomination.
- Recognition: Up to three per cohort
- Conferred by: Anonymous student nomination
- Honor: Invited to TGA Mentor Network
How the panel
decides.
All eight awards are decided against a published rubric. The weighting differs by award — Polaris weights technical and ethical reasoning most heavily; Stardust weights communicative depth; Galaxy Mentor is decided entirely by student vote — but the rubric itself is shared, audited, and made public after each cohort.
See full judging framework- AI logic & technical soundness 25%
- Urban systems understanding 20%
- Innovation & creativity 20%
- Design communication & clarity 15%
- Defense rigor & responsiveness 10%
- Team integration & role equity 10%
Prize philosophy.
A competition that offers one trophy trains one kind of team: the kind that can put its two strongest speakers in front and hope. TGA offers eight honors because urban work, AI work, and academic work do not share a single peak. The Galaxy is a refusal to pretend otherwise.
Polaris is allowed to go unawarded. That is the most important sentence on this page. If the panel cannot unanimously name a project that is rigorous, original, and ethically grounded at the standard we published, the sky stays unmarked. A forced Polaris would be a marketing object. We are not in the market for those.
North Star is the team honor: seven days, not one artifact. Rising Star is individual growth, which means a student from a quiet team can still be seen. Supernova protects surprise that can survive a doubt. Binary Star protects the pair who made each other sharper. Constellation protects the eight who refused to let two people carry six. Stardust protects meaning — language, image, the thing that made the room pause — without letting it replace argument. Galaxy Mentor protects the adult who taught students to defend, not to recite, and it is the only honor students themselves confer.
We do not publish a cash table. The material prize is the week, the record, and, for some honors, a yearbook feature or a case study. If a sponsor later endows a named bursary, it will be described as a bursary, not as a purchase of an honor. Honors are not for sale. Category sponsorship, if it exists in a given year, cannot sit on the Polaris decision.
We do not invent named student winners for this website. Where a citation appears with consent, it appears with a year and an honor, not as a celebrity. Minors are not a content strategy. If you see a list of "TGA champions" with full names on a third-party page, treat it as unverified until the code on Verify says otherwise.
How an honor becomes a record.
An honor that cannot be checked is a rumour. Every Galaxy citation is written into the same TGA-CERT identity that participation uses. The verifier does not have a separate "winners' door."
On the evening of day seven, the panel's decisions are read in the room. Overnight, authorised staff issue or update each participant's record. By the time teams are in the airport queue, the adult lead has digital copies. Print copies travel with the team or follow by post if a flight is too tight. The public page at verify.html will resolve those codes. Sample codes on that page are demonstration records so a curious admissions officer can see the interface without handling a student's identity.
If a certificate is lost, the lead requests a replacement; the archive marks it as a replacement. If a name is misspelled, we amend and log. If someone presents a TGA honor they did not receive, the verifier will not show it, and we would like to know. Forgery is not a clever hack of a youth award. It is fraud against the students who did the week.
Read the full explainer on Certificates before you write to us about paper stock, holograms, or "can you add our school crest." The document is bilingual, landscape, and deliberately spare. It will not carry an ISEF or iGEM mark, a university crest implying a joint degree, or a grade. Scholars from NUS, NTU, HKU, and Cambridge may sit on the panel; their institutions are not the issuer.
Teachers building a school awards night may say: this student completed the Tech Galaxy Award 2026 intensive in Singapore, TGA-CERT-…, and (if true) received [honor]. That sentence is enough. A longer sentence is usually a worse sentence.
Verify a certificateFind your place
in the galaxy.
Every TGA participant receives a verifiable certificate of participation. Honorees are added to the TGA permanent record. Mentors join an alumni network of educators around the world.
Register a team Verify a certificate