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News Release

Last modified: Friday, April 28, 2006

Local science team aims high at national tournament

DATELINE, XX -- A group of bright and talented students from (SCHOOL NAME) in (CITY) will compete against the nation's most promising future scientists and engineers at the 2006 Science Olympiad National Tournament in Bloomington, Ind.

From May 18 to 20, student teams will answer tough questions about genetics, aim high -- literally -- by launching projectiles, and measure the physical properties of sound waves produced by music instruments in such events as Disease Detectives, Storm the Castle and Sounds of Music.

Winners will be announced Saturday evening, May 20, during a series of special ceremonies.

(SCHOOL NAME) students are coached by (NAME OF COACH), who teaches (SUBJECT OR SUBJECTS) at the school. Additional team members include (NAMES OF STUDENTS), (GRADE LEVEL)th grade, etc. Some parents will accompany their children to Bloomington, bringing the total number of visitors to the Science Olympiad to nearly 5,000.

Most competitors will be seeing Indiana University Bloomington's beautiful campus for the first time. The university's science departments and schools are consistently rated among the nation's very best. Analytical and organic chemistry, informatics and information science, neuroscience, evolutionary and developmental biology are especially strong, and programs in physics, geological sciences, anthropology and mathematics are also highly esteemed.

IU claims four Nobelists, including Ph.D. student James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA's structure, and professors Hermann Muller, Salvador Luria and Renato Dulbecco.

IU Bloomington is also widely known for the Jacob's School of Music, arguably the best classical music conservatory at an American public university.

The competition is co-sponsored by Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois-based Science Olympiad, Inc., and Indiana University. The 2006 Science Olympiad National Tournament is supported by The Sallie Mae Fund (presenting sponsor); as well as Eli Lilly and Co.; the DuPont Corporation; The Abbott Fund; MasterBrand Cabinets, Inc.; the Lumina Foundation; BioCrossroads; the IU Credit Union; the Biomet Foundation; the Raytheon Company; Texas Instruments; the Guidant Foundation; the Chandra X-Ray Center (a joint venture of NASA and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory); the Brooks and Joan Fortune Family Foundation; Terry Trippe; and Bloomington's WonderLab.

Virtually every research department at IU Bloomington is involved in some way. Hundreds of faculty, staff and students have volunteered to help competition organizers. Special support for the tournament is provided by the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences.

IU first hosted the Science Olympiad National Tournament in 1995. Only three universities have hosted the tournament twice -- IU, Ohio State University, and Michigan State University.

For more information about the tournament, please visit:
https://www.indiana.edu/~nso

For more information about Science Olympiad, Inc., please visit:
https://www.soinc.org/

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