Privacy Policy

Student information

We collect information provided when a student applies or takes part in a program:

• Name
• Date of birth
• Grade level
• School and city
• Email address
• Mobile phone number
• Research interests and application responses

Parent or guardian information

We require a parent or guardian’s details when a student applies:

• Name
• Email address
• Mobile phone number

Research work

We collect the work a scholar produces in the program: research questions, background notes, hypotheses, experimental designs, data, drafts and finished papers, together with mentor review and feedback on that work.

Communications

• Emails
• Text messages
• Contact and application forms
• Messages to mentors and staff
• Uploaded documents

To provide the program

• Open and maintain accounts
• Match a project with appropriate mentors and specialists
• Review and give feedback on a scholar’s work
• Prepare projects for science-fair competition and manage the related deadlines and approvals
• Communicate with students and their parents or guardians
• Process applications and enrollment

AI-assisted features

The research workspace uses AI to review a scholar’s own writing, checking it for shape and grounding and assembling their notes into documents. Text a scholar writes is sent to our AI provider to produce that feedback.

AI does not approve a step, does not generate research findings, and does not replace a mentor’s judgment. We do not use a scholar’s work to train third-party AI models.

Who sees a scholar’s work

• Mentors, subject experts and coding coaches assigned to that project
• Ardent Research staff who administer the program
• A student’s authorized parent or guardian
• Service providers who host our systems, send our email, and provide AI review, under contract
• Competition organizers, where a scholar chooses to enter and only as that entry requires
• Where required by law

What we do not do

• We do not sell personal information.
• We do not sell student information.
• We do not use student information for targeted advertising.
• We do not share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising.
• We do not publish a scholar’s name, project or work without recorded permission from their family.

Ardent Research serves students in grades 6 through 12.

A student may open an account to apply. We require the name and contact details of a parent or legal guardian at that point, we contact that guardian about the application, and any enrollment agreement is made with the guardian rather than the student.

We collect only what is reasonably necessary to provide the program, and we do not condition participation on providing more.

Parents and guardians may

Requests may be sent to research@ardentresearch.org. We may require reasonable verification before acting on a request involving student information.

• Review their student’s information
• Request corrections
• Request deletion where permitted by law

Retention

We keep information for as long as it is needed to provide the program and to meet legal, accounting and record-keeping obligations, then delete or de-identify it.

Security

We use reasonable administrative, technical and physical safeguards to protect information. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure.

Your choices

• You may unsubscribe from non-essential email at any time.
• You may ask us to correct or delete information, subject to law.
• You may decline to provide information, though some of it is necessary to take part.

Changes

We may update this Policy. Material changes will be reflected in the date at the top of this page.

Questions about this document can be sent to research@ardentresearch.org.

See also Privacy Policy · Terms of Use