Cuban students won one silver and three bronze medals at the 59th International Mendeleev Chemistry Olympiad (IMChO), held in Belo Horizonte, capital of the state of Minas Gerais in southeastern Brazil.

After six days of theoretical and practical tests that concluded on Monday, 260 students from 40 countries competed in the first competition of its kind to be held in the southern hemisphere.

For Cuba, silver was won by Juan Carlos Yepe, from the Instituto Preuniversitario Vocacional de Ciencias Exactas (IPVCE) in Havana. The bronze medals were won by Marco Antonio Asin and Roy Roger González, both from the IPVCE in Camaguey, and Ernesto Alejandro Barrera from Sancti Spíritus.

For the first time, a Cuban, Dr. Gerardo Manuel Ojeda, head of the pre-selection and professor at the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Havana, was invited to be a member of the international jury.

Dr. Julieta Coro Bermello, president of the Cuban Society of Chemistry, professor of Biochemistry at the pre-selection and at the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Havana, was also a member of the Cuban delegation as a mentor.

In a novel way, Latin American countries were invited, in homage to Brics+ (the enlargement of the Brics bloc that originally consisted of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, and now includes new members such as Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates).

The competition brought together participants at the Chemistry Department of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG).

Presented by Rector Sandra Regina Goulart, the gold medals went to representatives from Russia (the country that received the most gold awards), China, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Hungary.

The prizes for the best theoretical and practical test went to Yaoxi Zhao from China and Mengdigalli Kaldybay from Kazakhstan.

Yaoxi also won the Valery Lunin Academic Award, established by the Melnichenko Foundation and presented to the tournament’s top performers.

The IMChO was established at the Faculty of Chemistry of Lomonosov Moscow State University, with the aim of fostering the development of scientific talent in the field.

The competition is named after the Russian chemist Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev, the discoverer of the periodic law, on the basis of which the periodic table of the chemical elements was created.

This year’s Mendeleev International Chemistry Olympiad was organised by the UFMG, the Faculty of Chemistry of Moscow State University and the Melnichenko Foundation.