IB winners in the Young Researchers Competition 2025!

Congratulations to Said Zeki Gökmen(2IB) and Hannah Marie Hjertenes(3IB) for being the IB winners of the Young Researchers Competition 2025. This is a challenging competition, with many incredibly qualified individuals taking part, so we're so proud of the two of them for performing so well!

The Young Researchers Competition, or Unge Forskere, is an interdisciplinary competition, open to all middle and high schoolers in the country. Students from all over are invited to share their contributions to science, technology, and humanitarian studies. The competition starts with the closing of the signup sheet on the 17th of January and then ends with the finals ceremony on the 4th of April.

Both of these fantastic students participated in the science and technology category, so let's hear more from them about their projects, experience with the competition, and wise words they have for the next set of IB students who want to participate!

Said Zeki Gökmen (2IB)

“Hi, my name is Said and my project's name is “Power to trust analysis of ionic wind generator”. My project involved investigating the feasibility of ionic thrusters (electronic rocket propulsion systems) in space launch applications. I experimented with this by building a model at home and testing its effectiveness in different measures, such as power-to-thrust ratio. I wanted to investigate this because I see a deep promise in electronic systems and I think they could be much more efficient than the chemical ones we have traditionally today.

The competition itself was thrilling. It was intellectually engaging to participate in, and I became very happy when I first learned I became a finalist. I participated fully independently, without any involvement from the school. It was a challenge to work alone and without guidelines, but it opened doors for creativity and improvising. It was very interesting to talk to the other finalists and people of the same minds. Finally, I am super grateful to come third in the biggest high school research competition in Norway.

My tips for other people who would want to partake in would be; to do the project that especially interests you, not just to participate in the competition. Because this will and curiosity will be your main motivation and push you forward.”

A project that is so interesting while working independently from the school, congratulations again to Said! Now let's hear from Hannah.

Hannah Marie Hjertenes(3IB)

“Hi, My name is Hannah and I submitted my Extended Essay to the jury of Unge Forskere. I wrote my essay in the field of biology, the title of my project was "Analysing the concentration of phosphate and nitrogen in local lakes in Akershus". I wanted to understand how the human population density around the lakes impacted the concentrations of phosphate and nitrogen. Since research shows urban areas can contribute to higher amounts of phosphate entering waterways. 

For my project, I took water samples from lakes Semsvann, Bogstadvann, Bondivann, and Engervann in May and July. Semsvann had the lowest human population density and Engervann the highest. Then I measured the amount of phosphate. I created a calibration curve by adding reagents to a phosphate stock solution which caused the solutions to absorb varying amounts of wavelengths at 880 nm corresponding to the concentration of phosphate present. 

Using the calibration curve I then found the absorption of my water samples at 880 nm and used it to find the concentration of phosphate. One of our IB teachers works at the University of Oslo so I had the opportunity to do my method again at the university. There I also measured the concentration of nitrogen using an automatic machine. Although I found that population density and phosphate concentrations didn't have a strong correlation, drafting the essay and the research process was really interesting. 

The competition and award ceremony were also great! The ceremony was held at Deichmann Bjørvika, there all the finalists presented our projects with posters, received our certificates, and later had the chance to go to Det Norske Vitenskaps Akademi for mingling and snacks. At the ceremony, we met a lot of top researchers, including professors from the University of Bergen, NTNU, and Oslo. The mayor of Oslo was also present and handed us our certificates. 

It's a great competition and I encourage everyone to submit their projects to it! The winner of the competition gets to move on to the European Union Contest for Young Scientists in Latvia (which I think is an all-paid-for trip), additionally, you can win a trip to Andøya space center, and one winner even has the chance to win the next years Nobel Peace Prize Winner! 

My tip is if you take the IB and you are submitting your IA or EE, look over the website and what the criteria the jury expects you to follow, and edit and adjust your work so it better fits their expectations.  Also, from what I saw the jury focuses more on the quality of the paper you create, and if you want to win your paper should be university-level (with a proper background, main body, conclusion, graphs, diagrams, etc). The quality of the paper should be your priority, more so than what your paper is about or the conclusions you draw from your research. So you don't have to research a super complex topic to do well or have a super high-tech and fancy method.

Also, there are multiple categories for Unge Forskere! So if you are not a STEM person, there is also a humanities category where you can submit literature, history, philosophy, cultural, and psychology essays. Unge Forskere also accepts essays in both Norwegian and English.”

Thank you so much for your insightful words Hannah, another incredibly interesting project! 

Congratulations once again to the two competitors from our school to get to the finals and we can't wait to see what other brilliant projects are going to be submitted by future IB students!