T&T wins first International Chemistry Olympiad medal

Trinidad and To­ba­go has se­cured its first-ever medal at the In­ter­na­tion­al Chem­istry Olympiad (IChO), with Na­pari­ma Col­lege stu­dent Regi­nald Mo­hammed earn­ing a bronze medal at the 57th edi­tion of the glob­al com­pe­ti­tion held in Tashkent, Uzbek­istan.

The achieve­ment marks a mile­stone for the coun­try’s sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Chem­istry Olympiad (TTChO), a na­tion­al pro­gramme led by The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (The UWI), St. Au­gus­tine Cam­pus, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

Mo­hammed be­came the first Trinidad and To­ba­go rep­re­sen­ta­tive to earn a medal at the pres­ti­gious com­pe­ti­tion, which brings to­geth­er the world’s top chem­istry stu­dents un­der the age of 20 who have not yet be­gun ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion. He was joined on the na­tion­al team by Leon Copi­lah of Iere High School, Soren Nar­ine of Fa­ti­ma Col­lege and Zee­shaan Lall of Na­pari­ma Col­lege.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the com­pe­ti­tion fol­lowed a rig­or­ous two-year eval­u­a­tion process be­fore the coun­try was ad­mit­ted in 2021. Since then, the na­tion­al team has steadi­ly im­proved its per­for­mance, com­pet­ing vir­tu­al­ly be­fore mak­ing its in-per­son de­but in Switzer­land in 2023, fol­lowed by par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates in 2025 and Uzbek­istan this year.

The TTChO was es­tab­lished in 2019 dur­ing The UWI Fac­ul­ty of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy’s Sci­ence Week un­der the lead­er­ship of then Dean Pro­fes­sor Bri­an Cock­burn. The pro­gramme was de­signed to iden­ti­fy and de­vel­op tal­ent­ed sec­ondary school stu­dents while prepar­ing them to com­pete in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

Co­or­di­na­tor of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Chem­istry Olympiad, Dr Nigel K. Jal­sa, said the bronze medal re­flect­ed years of sus­tained ef­fort to raise the stan­dard of the pro­gramme.

“This medal didn’t hap­pen overnight. It rep­re­sents years of de­lib­er­ate­ly rais­ing the stan­dard of our pro­gramme, chal­leng­ing our stu­dents be­yond the sec­ondary school cur­ricu­lum and help­ing them re­alise that they can com­pete with the very best young chemists in the world. To­day, Trinidad and To­ba­go has shown that it be­longs on that stage,” Jal­sa said.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Chem­istry Olympiad re­quires com­peti­tors to com­plete two five-hour ex­am­i­na­tions—one the­o­ret­i­cal and one prac­ti­cal—that test ad­vanced sci­en­tif­ic rea­son­ing, lab­o­ra­to­ry skills and cre­ativ­i­ty be­yond the sec­ondary school syl­labus.

Stu­dents se­lect­ed through the na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion un­der­go months of in­ten­sive on­line and face-to-face train­ing de­liv­ered by lec­tur­ers from The UWI’s De­part­ment of Chem­istry while prepar­ing for their Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil ex­am­i­na­tions.

The Uni­ver­si­ty said the pro­gramme has be­come in­creas­ing­ly rig­or­ous, help­ing stu­dents de­vel­op an­a­lyt­i­cal think­ing and prob­lem-solv­ing skills while pro­duc­ing grad­u­ates who have ex­celled aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly. It al­so thanked the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, par­tic­i­pat­ing schools, teach­ers, par­ents and cor­po­rate spon­sors for sup­port­ing the ini­tia­tive, not­ing that in­ter­na­tion­al par­tic­i­pa­tion re­quires sig­nif­i­cant fi­nan­cial in­vest­ment.

The UWI said it re­mains com­mit­ted to strength­en­ing the pro­gramme and cre­at­ing more op­por­tu­ni­ties for young sci­en­tists to rep­re­sent Trinidad and To­ba­go on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage.