STEM national competition in Germany

Germany’s best known competition for the young generation is named “Jugend forscht und Schüler experimentieren” (Youth researches and students experiment). For the first level, the 31st Southwestern Saxony regional competition, almost 30 hard-working young researchers developed 19 projects. @solarisfzu supported this event with organization and promotion. Additionally, solaris Jugend- und Umweltwerkstätten (solaris STEM educational center) was involved, by helping some of the students with the practical preparation of their projects.

The topics covered were in the fields of geology, spatial science, biology, technology, work management, physics, and mathematics.

Because of the pandemic, just like last year, the competition took place completely online. Due to the digital competition mode, it’s not easy for participants to present their projects to a public audience (usually it is done as some kind of fair with information booths for visitors). As it is an essential part of the competition, a virtual exhibition of the projects was set up thanks to the efforts of the supporting company IN-TEC and solaris FZU took. Like in a museum, visitors could digitally gaze around and find out more about the projects. Some participants even produced videos online for that purpose.

The expert jury chose 6 winners (3 in the youth experiment category and 3 in the student experiment category). The award ceremony on March 12, 2022, hosted by IHK Chemnitz on their premises, was held without participants but was instead transferred via a video stream.

Besides the winner trio, also other projects gained additional, special prizes from different organizations that support the competition. After the successful public vote debut last year, in addition to jury prizes, all projects could compete for an audience award. This prize was given to three projects that gathered most of the total 322 votes cast within the two voting weeks.

All regional winners afterward represented Southwestern Saxony in the Saxon national competition on April 9, 2022. One of the Southwestern Saxony projects – “Energy efficiency of different electric heaters” by Yara Oberender – won in the Saxon competition and will move to the federal final, which will take place from May 26 to May 29.