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Top contestants presented their research projects to the competition jury.

This year more than one hundred contestants together with scientists and professors of the Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU) looked into the key economics, chemistry and environmental topics that present a great interest to the city of Nakhodka. Students studied the impact of illegal dumping on soil, searched for safe detergents, studied the situation with beaches and lakes. For the fourth time the contest was arranged by the Nakhodka Mineral Fertilizer Plant (NFP).

“The quality of students’ research projects is getting better and better with each year. It is clear that close collaboration with scientists has a positive impact on both teachers and students. Now we can also trace a certain level of consistency: each year teachers would build a team that would either continue the research from the previous year or start looking into a related topic, thus accumulating the results and giving the research a more practical focus,” says Valery Petukhov, Expert of ‘Formula for Success’ and Deputy Director of the FEFU School of Development.

10 out of 23 teams made it to the final by presenting the most remarkable and detailed projects. Representatives of NFP also became members of the competition jury. Support of students’ initiatives is the key priority of the youth policy of NFP. Each participant of the ‘Formula for Success’ is a potential employee of the Plant.

“A contest research paper is a large-scale project with a hypothesis, analysis and findings. It helps children to develop project thinking skills that will be extremely useful not just at the university, but in future work as well. An employee who is able to detect a problem and find an adequate solution is very valuable,” says Yuriy Vykhodtsev, Chief Environmental Specialist of NFP.

Next year the contest shall receive the status of an academic competition, which would allow top participants and winners to be awarded additional points to the general score of the Unified State Exams to meet university entry requirements.