THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Thiruvananthapuram city lad Siddharth Kumar Gopal who represented India at the International Earth Science Olympiad (IESO) held in Beijing, China, has won a gold medal in the International Team Field Investigation event. The 16-year-old lost gold by a whisker, by 2 marks, in the individual event in the IESO. But that has not deterred him and he is contesting in yet another global event, the Non-Trivial Fellowship, an 8-week online fellowship for children in the age group of 14 - 20 years to start an impactful research to solve the world’s most pressing problems.
The IESO is one of the 13 Olympiads that are held every year and individual countries send their teams to compete. Subjects like Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics, Informatics, Astronomy, Coding Olympiad, etc. are also tested. In this particular case, there was an offline national-level exam conducted by the Geological Society of India which approximately saw 13,000 children from across the country battling it out.
Twenty children got selected which saw Siddharth being the only child from south India to enter the next round. He along with 19 children from across the country took part in an orientation-cum-selection camp held at Shillong’s North Eastern Hill University. Siddharth topped the camp and became part of the Indian team.
The whole team comprising four children took part in a pre-departure camp for 10 days at Anna University Chennai before flying to Beijing. There, 136 kids from 35 countries attended the competition held at Peking University, Beijing. Siddharth told TNIE that there was a theory and practical paper in which he was judged in the individual category and he came 14th in the world rankings and first among Indian students and won a silver medal.
“Initially, I was disappointed when I lost the gold medal by 2 marks. In the team category I competed in the International Team Field Investigation in which we were taken to Yanqi Lake and Quhe River in China and analysed its water chemistry. There we tested water samples at different depths and our 6-member team from Italy, Estonia, China, Taiwan, South Korea and Romania won the gold medal.”
India won 4 gold, 2 silver and 2 bronze medals, including Siddharth’s gold and a silver medal in the IESO. Siddharth has since moved to Bengaluru along with his mother, Vandhana Rajendran, director, Deloitte, where he is a student of Emerald International School. He is a bit disappointed that his father Dr Kumar Gopal, a gynaecologist who runs the family-owned Gowreesha Hospital in Thiruvananthapuram and his little sister is back in his hometown.
Now, along with preparing for the Non-Trivial Fellowship launched by a UK-based NGO, Siddharth is also preparing for the 2026 IIT - JEE exam.