Polytech Professor Advances Chemical Education in the Region

Sergey Yashkin’s student wins International Mendeleev Olympiad

Eleventh-grader Sofia Gabdrakhmanova won a gold medal at the 60th International Mendeleev Olympiad in Chemistry for schoolchildren. The girl studies chemistry at the Samara Regional Centre for Gifted Children (SRCOD). Her mentors are Professor Sergey Yashkin of Polytech’s Department of Analytical and Physical Chemistry and Ekaterina Yashkina, a graduate of the university’s Chemical Technology Faculty and a chemistry teacher at the SRCOD.

On her path to victory, Sofia had to overcome three multi-hour rounds:

• two theoretical rounds with the most challenging problems in all branches of chemistry;
• an experimental practical round in the laboratory of the country’s leading chemical scientific-educational centre – the Chemistry Faculty of Moscow State University.

This year’s practical tasks were devoted to fluorescence. Participants had to synthesise a fluorescent dye, analyse two variants of mixtures using different titrimetric techniques, and then perform a qualitative analysis using thin-layer chromatography.

Sofia Gabdrakhmanova successfully coped with all the tests and became the only girl among the 16 gold medalists of the Olympiad from Russia, China, Israel, Hungary, Vietnam and Kazakhstan.

“Sofia’s victory at the International Mendeleev Olympiad is a very important achievement for the Samara Region,” notes Sergey Yashkin. “In previous years, a graduate of our centre for gifted children, Lev Avvakumov, twice placed among the winners of these competitions: in 2023 he took bronze, in 2024 – silver. And now – the long-awaited gold for Sofia! It is a great honour for me to teach such children. They shape the intellectual potential of our city. And their achievements at the national and world level confirm the high quality of chemical education in Samara.”

The International Mendeleev Olympiad is one of the most prestigious school chemistry olympiads in the world, whose international status is recognised by UNESCO. It has been held since 1967. In previous years, the competition has taken place in CIS countries, China and Brazil. This time, the organisers were the Chemistry Faculty of Moscow State University and the Andrey Melnichenko Foundation.

National teams from 37 countries – a total of 200 schoolchildren – took part in the Olympiad final. Russia was represented by 15 of the country’s strongest young chemists from different cities. To join the national team, Sofia Gabdrakhmanova passed a serious selection process. It began at the school level and concluded with a victory in the final of the All-Russian Olympiad in Chemistry for schoolchildren. Incidentally, this year five other children from the Samara Regional Centre for Gifted Children became laureates of the All-Russian Olympiad: winners – Artyom Arkhipov and Ilya Beloivanov, prize-winners – Ilya Binkin, Maria Znobkina, Sofia Shishkareva. All of them are students of Sergey Yashkin, Ekaterina Yashkina, and SRCOD teachers – Polytech PhD student Natalia Shcherbatykh from the Department of Analytical and Physical Chemistry, and Dmitry Svetlov, a lead engineer at the Centre for Laboratory Analysis and Technical Measurements.