Report from the German national final of 2024’s International Junior Science Olympiad, Hannover

The International Junior Science Olympiad (IJSO) is a competition for bright young minds keen to tackle tricky and exciting problems from the scientific field. This year’s German national final took place between 23 and 27 September at Leibniz University Hannover, with 39 school students aged up to 15 in attendance - the highest-performing of the original 3700 participants. The Institute of Inorganic Chemistry at Leibniz University opened up its labs and lecture rooms to host the tough challenges that faced the competitors – two theoretical exams and one assessed experiment. After the intellectual work, the young people were able to chat and make new friends at games nights and during a trip to the beautiful Herrenhäuser gardens.

This varied and exciting week culminated in a prizegiving ceremony in Hannover’s Old Town Hall. Prof. Dr. Stefanie Heiden, dean of the university’s Faculty of Natural Sciences, gave an inspiring address to the audience of school students and their parents, and the biophysicist Prof. Dr. Sophia Rudorf electrified her listeners with a talk on research into ways of calculating the dynamics of protein synthesis in living cells. Marco Hartrich, Permanent Secretary in the Lower Saxony Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs, was impressed by the questions the young people asked after the talk; in his address, he urged them to stay passionate about science and praised their support networks of parents, teachers, and others.

The Leibniz-Institute for Science and Mathematics Education (IPN) in Kiel has been running the IJSO’s German competition, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, since 2008. A team from the IPN helped look after the young finalists in Hannover, as did competitors from previous years who were able to give them “sneak peeks” into potential future careers.  

The top-performing six finalists won places on the national team. They are: Maria Anna Salsa, Dominik Stauff and Marie Lautenschlager from Munich, Elise Wagner from Dresden, Michael Hahn from Königswinter, and Leonhard Beyer from Magdeburg. They’re now looking forward to early December, when they will travel to Bucharest to compete in the international contest against 300 young science whizzes from a total of 55 countries in the hope of winning a gold, silver or bronze medal. We’re sure they’ll have a busy training schedule until then.

We share our team members’ excitement about the upcoming international competition and wish them every success.

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