Leyte student wins global science contest

TACLOBAN CITY (PNA) -– A student from Leyte bested 11,000 young learners from 178 countries to bag the third annual Breakthrough Junior Challenge (BJC) Prize, earning over P20 million in prizes.

Hillary Diane Andales, 18, from the Philippine Science High School (PSHS) Eastern Visayas Campus in Palo, Leyte, received the award on December 3 at the NASA's Ames Research Center in California.

The native of Abuyog town made the video Relativity and Equivalence of Reference Frames, understandable to the layman.

Andales received a $250,000 postsecondary scholarship. A $50,000 prize went to her science teacher Xavier Francis de los Reyes and a $100,000 Breakthrough Science Lab for her school designed in partnership with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

The total prize is $400,000 or R20.27 million.

The Breakthrough Junior Challenge is a global science video competition designed to inspire creative thinking about the fundamental concepts in life sciences, physics and mathematics.

The competition kicked off last September 1. Andales didn't make it as the Top Scorer in the online competition, but she made it to the finals as Asia's regional representative.

The entrants were asked to create videos that simplify complex ideas into basic terms. The videos were evaluated based on Creativity, Difficulty, Engagement and Illumination.

This was Andales' second time in the competition.

Last year, with more than 300,000 views of her video, she won the Top Popular Vote.

She automatically qualified as finalist for her video presentation on Feyman's Path Integrals" explaining in advance Physics concept that can be understood by an average person.

This lone BJC winner is a recipient of Mga Bagong Rizal 2017: Pagasa ng Bayan. The awarding will be on December 30, Rizal Day.