Indian students bag gold, four silvers at International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics

NEW DELHI: The Indian students have bagged one gold and four silver medals at the 17th International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics (IOAA) held in Brazil. Daksh Tayalia from Bengaluru won the gold medal while Aayush Kuthari and Sanidhya Saraf from Pune, Banibrata Majee from Hyderabad and Panini from Bihar were awarded silver medals, the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education-Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (HBCSE-TIFR) said in a statement.

The team led by Prof. Bhargav Vaidya from IIT-Indore and Pritesh Ranadive HBCSE-TIFR, Mumbai, while Prof. Arnab Bhattacharya and Dr Akshat Singhal (both HBCSE-TIFR), Dr Vaibhav Pant (Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), Nainital and Yash Mehta (Open AI) attended the event as Scientific Observers.

There were 232 students from 52 countries participating in this year's IOAA. In the medals tally, India was placed in the eighth position after Iran (five golds), the US (three golds), Romania, South Korea, Singapore, Slovenia and Canada (two golds each).

The IOAA competition consists of three components — theory (50 per cent), observation (25 per cent) and data analysis (25 per cent). India will be hosting the IOAA at Mumbai in August next year.