Rory Welsh (OS 2021) was part of a team of four students representing the UK at the International Biology Olympiad (IBO) Challenge this year earning a Bronze medal at the event.
The competition was expected to take place in Lisbon, Portugal, but instead ran online as an IBO Challenge and remotely in each competitor’s home country due to the pandemic. Students from more than 50 countries participated in the international competition.
The UK team were selected from 8,000 students who took part in the British Biology Olympiad in March, while they were still at school, organised by UK Biology Competitions (UKBC). The team had training sessions together across all sorts of biology, from genetics and bioinformatics to histology and botany for the weeks preceding the competition before taking the exams themselves in late July. These were a fairly intense set of online papers we completed over two days.
The team then got together in London and enjoyed celebratory dinner at the end of the competition with some of the UK teams from previous years.
Overall, a tough but rewarding experience and a fantastic achievement for Rory.
