180 projects chosen for Mawhiba’s scientific Olympiad

The King Abdulaziz and His Companions Foundation for Giftedness and Creativity, or Mawhiba, has selected 180 projects from a pool of 210,000 submissions across 21 scientific disciplines for the 14th annual National Olympiad for Scientific Creativity, Ibdaa 2024.

The exhibition, held in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, will take place on Feb. 14 at King Saud University in Riyadh, the Saudi Press Agency reported on Tuesday.

Thirty-five students at the exhibition will be selected to take part in the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair in the US.

Mawhiba said that the projects included 30 in the energy sector, 26 in materials science, 24 in chemistry, 17 in environmental engineering, 11 in biomedicine and health sciences, and nine in plant sciences.

The selected projects are from the Kingdom’s 10 regions, led by the Eastern Province with 81 projects, followed by Makkah (41), Riyadh (33), Qassim (six), Madinah and Asir (five each), Jazan (four), Tabuk (three), and Baha and Najran (one each).

This year, the foundation recorded a 44 percent increase in the number of students submitting projects, reaching 210,000 compared to last year’s 146,000.

The Ibdaa 2024 Olympiad aims to discover and support Saudi Arabia’s talented students, fostering their skills and advancing scientific projects.

The annual event provides an innovative environment for collaboration between educational supervisors, education departments and researchers, with a goal to support students.