IB-students Win Science Competition

Two IB-students at Grenaa Gymnasium won the biology challenge in this year’s Drughunters, pharmaceutical company Lundbeck’s science competition.

Jogaile Kripaite from Lithuania and Valerija Barkanova from Latvia are IB2-students at Grenaa Gymnasium and are now going through their final exams.

On their very last day of school on April 26^th they went to Copenhagen to participate in the finals of Drughunters, Lundbeck’s science competition for upper-secondary students in Denmark. During the days up to the event they had spent many hours preparing for their presentation about possible future treatment of schizophrenia.

“We had chose which neurobiological or psychiatric illness to do research on ourselves,” Jogaile explains. “We were inspired to work with schizophrenia after having watched the film A Beautiful Mind.”

Valerija continues: “The task was to do research on a possible cause for the illness, a possible biomarker to track the progression of the illness and the progression of treatment. We then had to produce a poster that presented our research and our results and send that to Lundbecks. This was the first round of the competition.”

The poster turned out to be convincing and the girls were in the finals. They won the finals after having presented their research and answered questions that tested their knowledge and their ability for scientific reasoning.

Read about IB at Grenaa Gymnasium

A Refreshing Extra-Curricular Experience

“It has been a refreshing experience,” says Jogaile. “We had the opportunity to chose a topic ourselves. It has been fun and it has reminded me why research is interesting.”

There were also competitions in biotechnology and chemistry and approximately 200 students took part in the finals out of 1500 contestants from the outset.

Joining the competition has been an extra-curricular activity for Jogaile and Valerija. They both live at Grenaa Gymnasium’s boarding school and boarding school teacher Jess Boye who is also teaches biology, has guided them in the process.

“I am proud of what Jogaile and Valerija have achieved,” Jess Boye says. “They are very keen and able students who never do anything in halves.” He further explains that it is the first time that IB-students have taken part in Drughunter.

Generous Prizes and a Diploma

There were of course prizes for the winners. A set of speakers, a gift card worth kr 1000,- and last but not least a restaurant dinner for their class mates at a place of their choice. Also they received a diploma that might help opening doors in their pursuit of further education after their  IB exams.