More than 100 students from 17 countries joined the Arctic Competition in January 2019.

The international jury with members from Poland, Norway, France, Iceland and the Faroe Islands evaluated the projects. In the final stage of the competition, the jury invited fourteen projects with the highest scores to online interviews.

The fourteen teams came from schools in Belgium, Slovenia, Greece, Spain, North Macedonia, Poland and Romania. The subjects were creative scientific or innovative projects covering themes ranging from anti-tumour properties of arctic fungus, the question why diabetes type 1 is so prevalent in Scandinavia, and the relation between arctic climate change and the northern lights.

After the fourteen interviews one of the members of the jury expressed: “This evaluation is very close. I am deeply impressed by the extraordinary high standard of the projects in the final stage of this competition. Our budget only has room for four winners but in reality just being in the final stage is winning the competition.”

On April 30th the international jury could finally announce the four winning teams, representing five teenagers and their four teachers from Belgium, Slovenia, Greece and Spain.

The winners are (in random order):

• Thomas Wielfaert (student) and Ines Tavernier (teacher) from Brugge in Belgium. Thomas looks at if nanoplastics can be found in sea ice.
• Katarina Ahlin Rezar (student) and Adela  Žigert (teacher) from Ljubljana in Slovenia. Katarina has made a project about heavy metals in bears fur.
• Judith Zaragoza López (student), Tarik El Aichouni Jouied (student) and Jordi Escofet Miró (teacher) from Terrassa in Spain. Judith and Tarik have made an innovative installation to explain to children how earth’s annual journey around the sun defines our seasons.
• Vakrinou Annelia (student) and Eirini Siotou (teacher) from Spata in Greece. Vakrinou looks at the effect of UV radiation on the leaves of Valerian plants.

The prize for the winners is to become Arctic explorers on an 8 days long adventurous Arctic Expedition in the end of June 2019 to either the Faroe Islands or to Svanhovd in Northern Norway.

EU funds the Edu-Arctic project with partners from Poland, France, Faroe Islands, Iceland and Norway, through the Horizon 2020 programme. The project partners have organized three Arctic Competitions in addition to providing online lessons, as well as activities and material to engage youth in STEM subjects about the Arctic.

The Edu-Arctic project invites teachers and all interested parties to the final conference in Paris on the 23rd og 24th of May where the results from the project will be presented about how the science environment and schools can inspire each other through STEM. The conference is free for all participants and the programme can be found at https://edu-arctic.eu/conference