Team Usa Selected by Center for Excellence in Education at Purdue Event to Compete at International Biology Olympiad

West Lafayette, IN (PRWEB) June 13, 2014

High school students from Minnesota, Oregon, Virginia and Washington have been selected by the Center for Excellence in Education (CEE) to represent the United States at the 2014 International Biology Olympiad (IBO) next month in Indonesia.

The four received gold medals during the CEE's 12th annual USA Biology Olympiad national finals hosted by Purdue University and will advance to the IBO on July 6-13. Team USA members selected during an awards ceremony Thursday (June 12) are:

They will travel to Bali, Indonesia, to compete at the IBO, a worldwide event involving students from 63 countries. Kathy Frame, director of the USABO and special projects for the CEE, and Clark Gedney, director of the BioMedia Center for Instructional Design at Purdue, will accompany Team USA at IBO.

This marks the fifth consecutive year that Purdue has co-sponsored the finals with CEE.

Silver medalists at the USABO are: Grace Chen, Bridgewater-Raritan Regional High School, Bridgewater, New Jersey; Michael Gao, Freehold High School, Freehold, New Jersey; Siddarth Guha, Dulles High School, Sugar Land, Texas; and Catherine Wu, Canyon Crest, San Diego.

Bronze medalists are: Peter Luo, William G. Enloe High School, Raleigh, North Carolina; Kevin Bao, Troy High School, Fullerton; Austin Wang, Flintridge Preparatory School, La Caada Flintridge; and Zhongxia Yan, Davis Senior High School, Davis, all in California.

Other USABO 2014 finalists are: Nithin Buduma, Lynbrook High School, San Jose; Jeff Chow, Cambridge Educational Institute, Chinos Hills; Jackie Osaki, Santa Monica High School, Santa Monica; Aneesh Samineni, The King's Academy, Sunnyvale, all in California; Boyang Dun, Canterbury School, Fort Wayne, Indiana; Erin Kim, Kappa Academy, Bayside, New York; and Peter Lu and Ming Liu, both of Mountain View High School, Vancouver, Washington.

Earlier this week, the students took two exams - a practical and a theoretical. The four students scoring the highest on those exams won gold medals at the USABO and earned spots on Team USA 2014 to compete at IBO.

Since arriving at Purdue on June 1, the high school students have participated in lectures, study sessions and laboratory exercises led by biology experts in fields that include microbiology, plant anatomy, physiology, ethology, genetics and biosystematics.

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Team Usa Selected by Center for Excellence in Education at Purdue Event to Compete at International Biology Olympiad