EU Contest for Young Scientists 2025 to be held in Latvia

RIGA - Latvia has been entrusted to organize the EU Contest for Young Scientists (EUCYS) in 2025, the National Centere for Education (NCE) informed LETA.

NCE head Liene Voronenko said that over the last seven years, new opportunities have been created for Latvian pupilsstudents, to participate in scientific research, and the organization of EUCYS 2025 in Latvia is a "huge success" for the work done by supported by teacher supervisors of scientific research projects (SRPs).

She said that the participation of Latvian universities has created "enormous added value", through which regional SRP conferences have been held at the University of Latvia, Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies, Daugavpils University, Liepaja University and Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences since 2017. Riga Technical University has also been a supporter of the national conferences.

EUCYS is the most important competition for young scientists in the European Union, it was created by the European Commission in 1989, and brings together the best young scientists aged 14 to 20 each year. The aim of the competition is to develop cooperation and knowledge exchange between young scientists. The competition is an annual showcase of the best scientific achievements of European pupilsstudents.

NCE said the EUCYS gives participants the opportunity to compare themselves with the best of their peers at European level. It also gives young scientists the chance to meet other people with similar interests and to get to know some of Europe's top scientists. This attracts fosters young people's attraction interest in to careers in science and technology.

EUCYS takes place in a different European country each year. This year it took place in Brussels, where the Latvian team representative Ilja Niks Stoligvo from Riga State Gymnasium No.1 won the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) special prize for his research Empirical prediction of chalcopyrite grid lattice parameters from chemical properties of the included their constituent elements. From Latvia, RTU School of Engineering student Patriks Gustavs Rinkevics also took part with his paper Cyclic motion path reproduction Representation of cyclic motions with mechanical linkages by mechanical compounds using genetic evolutionary algorithm.

A total of 136 promising young scientists aged 14 to 20, representing 36 countries, took part in this year's Contest for Young Scientists.