Tech
Galaxy
Award
tga.org
What a TGA certificate is.
Every student who completes the intensive in good standing receives a printed certificate and a digital record. Both carry a TGA-CERT identity in the form TGA-CERT-XXXXX-XX. That identity is the canonical statement that the holder was there, in that cohort year, and — if applicable — that a Galaxy honor was conferred.
This page is the public explainer. The machine that checks a code is on Verify. The staff tools that issue a code are not public, are noindexed, and are not a puzzle for visitors.
Anatomy of the document.
A TGA certificate is a landscape document. It is designed to be photographed, filed, and still readable in ten years. It is not a social-media card.
01
Holder and cohort
The name as the team roster spelled it, the cohort year, and the programme name in English and Chinese. We do not invent honorifics.
02
The TGA-CERT code
A unique identifier. Anyone can type it into verify.html. The result shows authenticity, year, and honors. Sample codes on the Verify page are real demonstration records.
03
Honor line
Participation is the base line. Galaxy honors (Polaris, North Star, Rising Star, Supernova, Binary Star, Constellation, Stardust, Galaxy Mentor) appear when conferred. Polaris may be withheld in a year where the panel is not unanimous that the standard was met.
04
QR and URL
A QR code points at the public verification page, not at a staff issuance tool. If a certificate's QR points somewhere else, treat the document as suspect and write to us.
05
Marks and language
The TGA mark, the gold accent used across this site, and bilingual captions. Decorative stars are decoration. They are not a ranking of the holder.
06
What is absent
No university crest implying a joint degree. No ISEF or iGEM badge. No grade point. No claim of academic credit. If a third party has added those things to a scan, they added them, not us.
How a code is born.
Issuance happens after the closing ceremony, from an authorised staff page that search engines are told not to index. The public never needs that page. Admissions officers never need that page. If someone sends you a link that looks like an issuance form, it is not a TGA service for you.
On day seven, honors are announced. Overnight, each participant's record is written: name, team, year, participation, any honor. A code is generated. A PDF and a print file are produced. The adult lead receives the digital copies. Students receive the print copies before they leave Singapore when logistics allow; otherwise the lead receives a shipped set.
After publication, records are not silently edited. A spelling correction is a logged amendment. A withdrawn honor (which has not happened, and which we would only do for fraud) would be visible as a status change, not as a disappearing row. Permanence is the feature. A certificate that can be quietly rewritten is a brochure.
Verification is a lookup, not a login. You type the code. You see the record or you see a clear failure. There is no "pending" state for a published certificate. There is no fee to check one. There is no API for bulk harvesting; if you are a university admissions shop that needs to check a dozen codes, type them, or write to us with a list.
Who this document is for.
The student
Keep the paper. Keep the code. Put the code on a CV as "TGA-CERT-…, Tech Galaxy Award, [year]" plus any honor. Do not write "Cambridge certificate" or "ISEF affiliate." Do not photoshop a university crest onto the scan. The honesty of the document is part of its value. Inflating it makes the original cheaper.
The teacher
You may confirm a student's participation by using the public verifier. You may not ask us to back-date a certificate for a student who did not attend. You may not request a second original because the first is "not decorative enough." You may request a replacement if a print was damaged in transit; we will mark it as a replacement in the archive.
The admissions or scholarship officer
Type the code. If it matches the name and year on the application, the document is ours. If it does not, write to info@tga.org with the code and the name you were given. We treat those mails as first-priority. We will not tell you a student's unpublished bursary status. We will tell you whether a code is real.
The parent
The certificate is not a visa, not a university offer, and not a guarantee of future honors. It is a record of a week. That is enough, if the week was real. If a vendor offers to "upgrade" the certificate for a fee, they are not us.
The press
You may photograph the certificate design with credit. You may not invent named student winners. If we have a consented citation to share, we will share it. If we do not, the Galaxy still happened; it happened without a press list of minors.
What we will not do
We will not issue a certificate to a person who was not in the cohort. We will not sell a framed copy as merchandise. We will not add an ISEF, iGEM, Dyson, Imagine Cup, or Scholar’s Cup mark to our document because a student also did those things. Those organisations issue their own records. Ours is ours.
Check a code.
If you are holding a TGA certificate, the next step is mechanical. Type the identity. Read the result. If the result is wrong, tell us.
Verify a certificate See the Galaxy honors