Lower Saxony's Minister of Culture honors Chemistry Olympians

International Chemistry Olympiad - 20th Anniversary of the Lower Saxony Federal State Seminar

Lower Saxony's State Seminar of the International Chemistry Olympiad (IChO) celebrated its 20th anniversary this week. Lower Saxony's Minister of Culture Grant Hendrik Tonne also attended. He and Stephan Junginger, Honeywell Specialty Chemicals Seelze GmbH, and Renate Klingenberg, Deputy Managing Director of VCI Nord, awarded prizes to three schools in Lower Saxony and the best students in the second round of the IChO at an awards ceremony in the Haus der Chemie.

This year's prize for the most successful school went to the Neue Gymnasium Wilhelmshaven. Kim Hao Ng (1st place) and Ibrahim Chehadeh (3rd place) are two of the 20 best students from Lower Saxony.

The Alte Gymnasium in Oldenburg won the prize for the most continuous participation in the Lower Saxony IChO preselection. These students have been successful in the second round over the past eight years. With nine Olympians this year, it even provided the most participants.

The third school prize went to the Goethegymnasium in Hildesheim: After the school had not taken part in the competition for several years, three pupils made it into the top 20 in the overall ranking this year: Claas Ebert (9th place), Jan Steinmann (11th place) and Ireas Tom Raschke (20th place). This performance won the prize of "Most Promising of the Year ". Each of the winning schools received a €500 chemical package for teaching, sponsored by Honeywell.

A special prize this year went to René Krauth from the Leibniz School in Hanover: although he is only in the 7th grade, he successfully took part in the state preselection (17th place), an achievement that otherwise only high school students can achieve. The VCI Nord awarded him a book voucher worth 50 euros.

In addition, the Ministry of Culture awarded its own prizes to the three best-ranked students from Lower Saxony: Kim Hao Ng (1st place) and Ibrahim Chehadeh (3rd place) from the Neue Gymnasium Wilhelmshaven as well as Henning Korte from the Gymnasium Marianum in Meppen (2nd place) each received 100 euros.

The International Chemistry Olympiad targets students under the age of 21. The national selection procedure, which is carried out by the Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education (IPN) in Kiel, covers four rounds, the first two of which take place at the national level. Ultimately, the four best participants in Germany will make up the German national team. The international competition consists of a theoretical and a practical examination and covers almost the entire field of chemistry. The next International Chemistry Olympiad will take place in Paris (France) in 2019. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) sponsors the competition.

Contact at the IPN
Sonja Hanebaum
Telephone: +49 (0) 431 880 3116
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