India secured top rank at the 19th International Junior Science Olympiad (IJSO) 2022 held in Bogota, Colombia by winning 6 gold medals. In all, 20 gold, 42 silver and 59 bronze medals were awarded at this IJSO that was held from 2 to 12 December, 2022.

Arittra Malhotra, Rajdeep Mishra, Devesh Pankaj Bhaiya, Banibrata Majee and  Avaneesh Bansal were the students who bagged gold medals at the IJSO2022, Bogota. The three-member team of Arittra, Avaneesh and Rajdeep also got the Bronze medal jointly with another team in the Experimental competition. This is the third successive year (2019, 2021, 2022; IJSO was not held in 2020) and fourth overall (other year being 2014) that India has turned in an all-gold performance at IJSO and topped the medals tally.

The team was accompanied by three leaders: Prof. Chitra Joshi (Retd., R. Ruia Jr. College, Mumbai), Dr. Subhojit Sen (UM-DAE CEBS, Mumbai), Mr. Vishal Dev Ashok (S.I.E.S. College of Science & Arts, Mumbai) and one Scientific Observer: Mr. J. P. Gadre (Retd., Abasaheb Garware College, Pune).

There were 203 students from 35 countries participating in this year's IJSO. This year's competition was originally scheduled to be held in Kyiv, Ukraine; it was shifted to Bogota, Colombia in August 2022 due to the war in Ukraine.

 

The IJSO competition consists of two theoretical examinations (MCQs and long questions) and one experimental examination (performed by groups of three students). This year many of the tasks were very interdisciplinary in nature. One of the experiments, for example, modelled the working of neurons and the ability of neurotransmitters to activate gates that in turn trigger electrical signals. The students were then required to conceptualise and construct electrical circuits mimicking these gates by using resistors in series or parallel, so as to make a meaningful readout of an excitatory neural signal. Another example was in Chemistry where the measurement of fluid viscosity using flow dynamics was used to calculate the molecular weight of liquid polymers. Biology too was no exception, where the students were required to extract anthocyanin pigments from different plants and use them as an efficient pH indicator to differentiate acidic and basic foods, a seemingly very chemical concept. In theory, a question of ethanol extraction from maize plants gave the students a good idea of industry processes, focused on efficient and cheap biochemical processes. Our students greatly appreciated such questions.

This was the last international Olympiad of 2022. This year, of the 30 Indian students who participated in Mathematics and Science Olympiads, 12 have won Gold, 13 Silver and 5 Bronze.

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Source: HBCSE

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