Indian students bag four silver medals at IChO at Cambridge,UK

The silver medal winners are Abhishek Padmanabhan from Mumbai, Manikanta Kotaru from Hyderabad, Shruti Khatri and Vinayak Gagrani from Jaipur, National Coordinator of Science Olympiads Prof Vijay Singh said here.

In the IChO, 68 countries participated with over 250 of the brightest students across the world. “Our students were competing with the best in the world,” he said.

The four-member students team was accompanied by two leaders-Prof A A Natu, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, Dr A Srinivasan National College, Bangalore; and one scientific observer Dr Savita Ladage, Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, Mumbai.

These winning students were selected via three-tier process which began last year. The first-tier consisted of a nation-wide examination in Chemistry in which over 29,000 students appeared. Currently all the four students have joined IIT in Mumbai and Kharagpur.

The national olympiad selection process is supported by Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) Government of India. The Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (HBCSE) is the nodal centre for all Science Olympiads, Singh added.