30 July 2012 Charity. Education

Ukrainian Team Wins Prizes at International Chemistry Olympiad

As the 44^th International Chemistry Olympiad for high school students has come to an end, the Ukrainian participants winning one golden, two silver and one bronze medals pride themselves in ending up in the top ten of the world’s strongest teams.

The total of 280 students from 73 countries of the world spent ten days at Maryland State University (USA) competing in theoretical tests and practical challenges.

The Olympic golden medal went to a graduate of Lviv Physics and Mathematics Lyceum Igor Cherniuh. Siler medals were awarded to Irina Zaporozhets of Balakleya School #1 (Kharkiv region) and Dmitry Shibanov of Sevastopol specialized school #57 while Andrey Stelmakh, a 10-grader of Lviv Physics and Mathematics Lyceum, holds a bronze medal.

The preparatory course preceding the Olympiad was conducted by Prof. Yuriy Kholin of Kharkiv V. Karazin University with the sponsorship and support from Dmitry Firtash’s Group DF and OSTCHEM group of chemical companies belonging to Group DF.

The Ukrainian team’s supervisor has highly appraised the young Ukrainian chemists’ performance at the Olympiad. He is positive that the team scored spectacularly owing to their laborious efforts and state-of-the-art equipment donated by OSTCHEM, the team’s General Sponsor. “It is a remarkable success for us. The guys have shown excellent results winning four medals and making it to the world’s top ten. We are very grateful to our sponsors who had firm belief in the team and supported the young talents,” commented Prof. Kholin.

“The prestigious competition has shown to the world that Ukrainian youths are very talented and feature an outstanding academic potential,” said Alexander Khalin, General Director of OSTCHEM.

The support to the national students’ team is just a part of the overall project “Support to School Chemistry Education” initiated in 2011 by Mr. Dmitry Firtash, Head of the Board of Directors of Group DF. The project is aimed at promotion of the chemical discipline at schools and formation of the educational and academic environment which would help raise a new generation of gifted chemists in Ukraine.

Pursuing this effort, Group DF has already financed the organization of the final tournament of the Ukrainian National Olympiad for 10 and 11-graders held earlier in spring in Nikolayev. In 2011- 2012, OSTCHEM donated chemical lab equipment and reagents sets to 26 schools of Ukraine having trained the Ukrainian Olympiads prize winners. This was then followed by an acquisition of chemical hardware needed to secure the adequate training of students selected for participation in the International Olympiad.

NOTE

The first International Chemistry Olympiad took place in Prague in 1968. The competitions pursue the key goal of raising schoolchildren’s interest in chemical learning around the world. In order to popularize chemistry and to elevate the quality of this subject teaching, Group DF owned by Mr. Dmitry Firtash has been providing systemic support to most gifted students and teachers having achieved significant successes in mastering this science. Group DF has been paying a lot of attention and committing a good deal of resources to improve the technical capacity of chemical labs in Ukrainian schools.