Dipak Anthony Balladin of Naparima College and Zakareeyah Hosein of Couva East Secondary School have been crowned the inaugural senior and junior Trinidad and Tobago Chemistry Olympiad (TTChO) champions of 2020.
The TTChO is the local competition to qualify students for the International Chemistry Olympiad (IChO). This first ever TTChO was hosted by UWI St Augustine’s Faculty of Science and Technology (FST) in 2019/2020 as part of an outreach project to engage students nationwide in the study of chemistry. Over 800 entrants from schools across the country participated in either Level A (forms 2-5) or Level B (lower and upper 6).
The prize-giving ceremony was hosted by the Ministry of Foreign and CARICOM Affairs (MFCA). Senator Dr Amery Browne, Minister of the MFCA, presented prizes to the students. Both the Minister and Acting Permanent Secretary, Ms Reita Toussaint, lauded the student’s accomplishments and praised the efforts of the TTChO. The national Olympiad has the support of the MFCA and the Ministry of Education.
“The idea came from Dr Nigel Jalsa [lecturer of Biological Chemistry],” explained Mrs Laura Rambaran-Seepersad, TTChO Committee Member and Coordinator, FST. Mrs Rambaran-Seepersad, Dr Terry Mohammed (Deputy Dean of FST), and Dr Jalsa then formed the committee of the TTChO.
This year, hundreds of students will compete once again, going through three rounds, as T&T seeks to send (virtually) its first international participants to the 2021 IChO in Osaka, Japan.
In the 2019/2020 Olympiad, the students went through two phases of competition. Out of approximately 200 students who moved on to phase two of each category, Dipak, age 20, and Zakareeyah, age 17, were the winners.
“I was really excited to see how much I understood of the chemistry,” said Zakareeyah. Although both students admitted to being nervous, and increasingly so as the competition wore on, the merit of learning and being challenged outweighed the apprehension.
At the IChO level, the standard and syllabus content of the assessments is typically more challenging than what the average student would be exposed to.
“The qualifying exams of the TTChO reflect these higher-level skills,” says Mrs Rambaran-Seepersad. Upon making it past round two, the students have the opportunity to be tutored on the material through the TTChO, pushing the boundaries of the local chemistry knowledge for secondary school students even further. These four students and two mentors then train vigorously for the final round at the international level.
When asked about future career aspirations involving the science, Dipak says, “I will be incorporating chemistry into [another] field.”
The TTChO, through the FST, has highlighted the possibilities of chemistry and the way it weaves through many aspects of academics. With the number of participating students continuing to grow, the TTChO shows the versatility of chemistry and the value of love for the science.
For more information on the Trinidad and Tobago Chemistry Olympiad, visit https://www.ttcho.com/.
