new Delhi: India won six gold medals in the recently held International Junior Science Olympiad (IJSO) and topped the overall competition.
The 19th edition of the competition was held in Bogota, Colombia from 2 to 12 December. A total of six students, each earning a gold, participated in the event in which 203 students from 35 countries participated.
Aritra Malhotra from Delhi, Rajdeep Mishra from Jamnagar, Avneesh Bansal from Dehradun, Vasu Vijay from Kota, Devesh Pankaj Bhaiya from Jalgaon and Banibrata Majhi from Hyderabad were the winners.
Anvesh Majumdar, national coordinator of the Science Olympiad, told ThePrint, “It is an occasion of great joy, especially when India has won for the third time in a row. We are extremely proud of the students. Special mention to the Mentors and Tutors of HBCSE whose efforts and guidance must be acknowledged.
Talking about the complexity of the competition, Majumdar said that this year’s edition was challenging as the theory paper was mostly interdisciplinary.
“There are always elements like that but the factionalism was probably more this year,” he added.
This is the third year in a row and the fourth overall that the country has put up an “all-gold performance” at the International General Science Competition for students under the age of 16.
Along with the gold, Aritra Malhotra, Rajdeep Mishra and Avnish Bansal also earned a special bronze medal as a team in the experimental competition.
This year’s edition was originally scheduled to be held in war-torn Kyiv, but was later moved to Colombia due to the ongoing conflict in Russia and Ukraine.
Homi Bhabha Center for Science Education (HBCSE) is nodal center of the country for the Olympiad programme. The first stage for each subject is conducted by the Indian Association of Physics Teachers (IAPT) in collaboration with teachers’ associations in other subjects.
All the remaining stages are conducted by the HBCSE, which selects and trains the Indian team for the International Science Competition.