The event was organized by the ASEAN Center for the Gifted in Science (ACGS) and hosted by the Brunei Ministry of Education in collaboration with the Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD) and the Brunei Ministry of Development.
For the lab skills assessment, students were divided into teams of 3 members from the same country. They were tasked with a titration experiment for Chemistry on which they were judged based on the accuracy of their individual titrations. For Physics assessment, the students experimented with dye sensitized solar cells in which natural pigments obtained from plants of Brunei’s tropical rainforest were used. For the Biology assessment, the students studied the flora and fauna, as well as the microclimate in two of Brunei’s rainforests. Their findings were presented in front of a panel of judges and student and teacher participants. They were assessed based on teamwork, skills, effort and communication skills.
The Philippine team bagged a total of 12 medals. Students from PSHS Western Visayas Campus won a total of seven gold medals in the three science categories while the students from PSHS Central Campus won four silver and one bronze medals.
For the Biology field study, Ina Sison of PSHS-WVC was part of the team who won gold medal for their study on “Differences in leaf morphology of plants in the Andulao rainforest.” Gabriel Pineda of PSHS-CLC was part of the team who won silver medal for their work on “Variations in microclimate and soil characteristics in the tropical rainforest of Bukit Sawat”. Gabrielle Pineda of CLC was part of the team who won the bronze medal for their study on “Seedling abundance, density, height and size-classes distribution in a tropical rain forest in Bukit Sawat, Brunei.” Individual scores were added to the team score to get the over-all final score for each country.
After adding all the individual and team scores in the three science areas, the trio from the Philippine Science High School Western Visayas Campus in Iloilo emerged as the Grand Champion and brought home the First Place trophy. Second Place went to the Korean Team from the Korea Science Academy of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KSA of KAIST) and third Place went to the Singapore Team from the Hwa Chong Institution.
