“Nobel Prize laureates from Ukraine are a matter of time”

The third-year student of the Ivan Franko Lviv National University Andrii Neshchadin won the gold medal of the Fifth International Students Chemistry Olympiad that took place in Iran. Over 50 students from five countries had a struggle to win. “The contest consisted of four parts about each branch of chemistry: physical chemistry, organic chemistry, analytical chemistry, and inorganic chemistry. Every round lasted an hour and a half. It is quite little time taking into account that there were a lot of tasks and they were complicated. It was challenging. However, I liked the contest a lot as well as the hospitality of the country,” the winner shared his impressions with The Day. It was not the first Andrii’s prize who has been keen on chemistry since the school. Last year he also took the first place at the Fourth International Students Chemistry Olympiad in Iran and in 2009 he won a silver medal at the 43d International Mendeleev Olympiad in Turkmenistan and a bronze medal at the 41st International Chemistry Olympiad in Great Britain.

“Chemistry is a pleasure for me, I enjoy it a lot and cannot imagine my life without it since it is a part of my personality. I decided that I would be a scientist as early as at school,” the student said. Today Andrii is studying new methods of new substances production, new reactions and new compounds “that could potentially be bioactive and could be medicines in the future.” The young man sees his future in scientific work in Ukraine, though he does not deny that training abroad is an additional advantage for Ukrainian scientists. “Studies abroad in different formats are necessary. Ukrainians need the experience of foreign scientists since we do not have such equipment as they do; besides they have different traditions and different scientific schools. Sharing experience is very important, and then it is possible to return to Ukraine and work here. I know that many Ukrainian postgraduates undergo training courses abroad and then come back and work here,” Andrii explained. According to him, today the Ukrainian science is completely competitive and he is quite optimistic about its further development: “We have quite strong scientific schools of global scale. If someone asks why we do not have Nobel Prize laureates, it is a matter of time and funding. Everything is ahead.” Besides, the winner emphasized that “the global science is common.” There are certain differences between countries and scientific schools, but in general science has no borders,” Andrii Neshchadin summed up.

In general, Ukraine was represented in Iran by the students from Lviv, Kharkiv, Kyiv, and Donetsk. They took the second place as a team. The Ukrainian chemistry students also won four bronze medals.