Singapore Team Places 1st in International Geography Olympiad
Last Updated: 08 Sep 2022
Singapore students bring home a total of nine gold medals, 14 silver medals, three bronze medals and one honourable mention in this year's International Olympiads
The Ministry of Education (MOE) congratulates all students for their excellent performance in the International Olympiads for Geography, Informatics, Mathematics and the Sciences, and in the International and Online Young Physicists' Tournament1, which were held either overseas or virtually from July to August this year. Through a variety of enriching learning experiences, our students benefitted from the opportunity to interact with like-minded peers from all around the world, and they continued to fly the Singapore flag high in the international arena.
18th International Geography Olympiad (iGeo)2
2. The Singapore team won three Gold medals and one Silver medal at the 18th iGeo held virtually in Paris, France, from 12 to 18 July 2022, and emerged 1st out of a total of 54 countries/territories and 209 participants. The Singapore team also received the largest number of Gold medals in the Olympiad. The iGeo comprised a series of challenging written, multimedia and fieldwork tests, and our students demonstrated their depth of knowledge and understanding across a wide range of physical and human geography topics, including carrying out a virtual fieldwork exercise set in Paris. The Singapore team also participated in the iGeo poster presentation, where they shared Singapore's response to the effects of plastic pollution on aquatic ecosystems and oceans, as well as its impact on Singapore.
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34th International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI)3
3. The Singapore team won one Gold medal, two Silver medals and one Bronze medal at the 34th IOI held in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, from 7 to 15 August 2022, and they placed joint 10th out of a total of 88 countries/territories and 349 participants. The IOI required students to design and implement efficient algorithms and data structures to overcome challenging computational problems.
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63rd International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO)4
4. The Singapore team won four Silver medals, one Bronze medal and one Honourable Mention at the 63rd IMO held in Oslo, Norway, from 6 to 16 July 2022, and they placed 24th out of a total of 104 countries/territories and 589 participants. The IMO required students to solve six challenging problems on topics including number theory and geometry.
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33rd International Biology Olympiad (IBO) 20225
5. The Singapore team clinched two Gold medals, one Silver medal and one Bronze medal at the 33rd IBO held in Yerevan, Armenia, from 10 to 18 July 2022, and they emerged joint 5th out of a total of 62 countries/territories and 237 participants. The IBO required students to pit their skills and knowledge against their peers across a myriad of topics, including bioinformatics, ecology, cellular biology and biotechnology, and animal anatomy and physiology. In addition, our students also participated in the International Group Project, where they had to prepare a poster presentation on a chosen topic in 4-member groups comprising members from different countries. George Lee Zhi Xiang and Koo Min Seo achieved commendable results with their groups, coming in 1st and 3rd respectively for their projects.
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MOE would like to specially thank the late Dr Ng Ngan Kee from the Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore and Singapore Institute of Biology, for her dedication in mentoring our students for the IBO for the past two decades. Dr Ng also served as co-leader and jury member for Singapore’s IBO delegations since 2011. |
54th International Chemistry Olympiad (IChO)6
6. The Singapore team secured two Gold medals and two Silver medals at the 54th IChO hosted virtually by Tianjin, China, from 10 to 18 July 2022, and they placed joint 6th out of a total of 84 countries/territories and 326 participants. This year's IChO gave students the opportunity to explore a range of theoretical tasks related to human life and health, as well as economic and social development. This included the rapid nucleic acid amplification tests for COVID-19, the study of carbon dioxide capture, and the synthesis of chiral spiro catalysts widely used in the pharmaceutical industry. In addition, students also participated virtually in a learning journey, cultural activities and simulation experiments.
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52nd International Physics Olympiad (IPhO)7
7. The Singapore team won one Gold medal and four Silver medals at the 52nd IPhO hosted virtually by Zurich, Switzerland, from 10 to 17 July 2022, and they came in 9th out of a total of 75 countries/territories and 368 participants. In the experimental examination, our students were challenged to estimate the size and atmospheric properties of an alien planet by dropping simulated balls from a tall tower à la Galileo. In the theoretical examination, they had to estimate the strength of sandcastles and explore the physics of the James Webb Space Telescope8.
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35th International Young Physicists' Tournament (IYPT) 2022 and Online Young Physicists' Tournament (OYPT) 20229
8. Singapore formed two teams to participate in the in-person 35th IYPT held in Timisoara, Romania, from 16 to 22 July 2022, as well as the OYPT hosted virtually by New Zealand, from 28 – 31 July 2022. Both teams came in 2nd, out of a total of 25 countries/territories for the IYPT, and eight countries/territories for the OYPT. In these competitions, students were required to solve complicated real-world physics problems, as well as communicate and defend their ideas through rigorous scientific research and discussions.
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Footnotes
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Our students' participation in these international competitions is a joint effort between MOE and the following organisations: Singapore Mathematical Society; Singapore Institute of Biology; Institute of Physics, Singapore; DSO National Laboratories; Singapore National Institute of Chemistry; Geography Teachers' Association of Singapore; National University of Singapore; and the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University.
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Please refer to https://igeoparis2022.org for more information on the 18th iGeo.
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Please refer to https://ioi2022.id for more information on the 34th IOI.
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Please refer to https://imo2022.org for more information on the 63rd IMO.
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Please refer to https://ibo2022.org for more information on the 33rd IBO.
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Please refer to https://icho2022.cn for more information on the 54th IChO.
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Please refer to https://ipho2022.com for more information on the 52nd IPhO.
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The first images from the James Webb Space Telescope were released on 12 July 2022 during IPhO. Please refer to https://webb.nasa.gov.
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Please refer to https://www.iypt.org/past-tournaments/iypt-2022 and https://oypt.nlogn.org for more information on the 35th IYPT and OYPT respectively.