AGAIN IESO!

The schoolchildren became winners of the national competition held by the Foundation named after academician Shahmardan Yessenov and «Zhas geolog». 101 pupils (9-11 classes) of comprehensive schools took part in the selection, which was held in Almaty and Astana. The competition consisted of written testing in sciences, in which pupils will compete at the Olympiad, and an oral presentation in English on the topic of environmental protection.

All four winners are pupils of “Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools”. Aknazar is 17, and he set himself the goal of entering Harvard; he dedicated his presentation to the level of air pollution in his native city – Almaty. Kamila is of the same age as Aknazar; she is from Uralsk and she is interested in photography. Kamila is the prize-winner of regional and international olympiads (in geography, regional studies and English) and competitions of scientific projects. Islam studies in 11th class and he is engaged in basketball in the school team. After receiving a secondary education, he wants to study civil engineering. Islam already has awards of republican design Olympiads “Daryn”. Assylbek is a pupil of 10th class; in his spare time he trains pupils of one of the Almaty Cchildren’s Development Centers to assemble a Rubik’s cube.

On the question of how his interest in science began, he answered:

— Once, as a child, I woke up and began flipping TV channels. I stopped at one of them. The screen suddenly went out, an explosion sound was heard from the speaker, and the announcer said meaningfully: « So, the Universe appeared…..». After these words, I literally stuck to the TV. And gradually, through the programs of Discovery channel, I plunged into the world of black holes and quasars, — said Assylbek Umurzak.

12th International Olympiad on Earth Sciences (IESO) will be held from 8 to 17 August in the campus of the famous Thai Mahidol University.  Until then, the participants of the Kazakh National Team will be trained on a specially designed program.

— It includes classes in English, exercising tasks on geology, geophysics, meteorology, oceanography and astronomy, which the children will have to perform during the Olympiad. All expenses of the Kazakhstan Team on this trip will be covered by our organization, — explained the Coordinator of the Foundation’s programs – Nursultan Nurmuhanov.

Let us remind that Kazakhstan students brought home three medals from the Olympiad IESO 2017, which took place in France.