The biology olympiad final: training ground and meeting of minds

‘We decided long ago who’s going to win’, says Jari Woud, a sixth-year pre-university student at the Bonhoeffer College in Enschede. He is standing with Fosse Bekker, a fifth-year student at the Willem Lodewijks Gymnasium in Groningen, and several other finalists of the Dutch Biology Olympiad (NBO), taking a breather on the morning of Thursday 5 June after the microbiology practical. According to Bekker, Woud, and their fellow finalists, Davyd Prodaievych, a fifth-year student at RSG Wolfsbos in Hoogeveen, is the ideal winner. ‘He’s very motivated, has only been living in the Netherlands for a short time, loves biology, needs little sleep, and everyone wants him to win’, they argue. Prodaievych himself – rightly, as it turns out (see box: ‘Fourth-year student wins’) – plays down the role of favourite thrust upon him: ‘Going to the Philippines does sound great, but I don’t see this as a competition. I love challenges and I do my best, but what matters more to me is meeting interesting people with the same interests. Winning is beside the point.’

What’s best of all is working with like-minded people and having fun at the same time’

It captures the atmosphere of the NBO final week, in which nineteen pre-university students spend a week at Wageningen University being trained and tested, with four selected to represent the Netherlands at the International Biology Olympiad (IBO). The mood shifts between focused, concentrated study of practical manuals and Campbell Biology and cheerful, friendly exchanges of experiences and jokes. Today’s programme includes practicals in microbiology and molecular biology, but the effects of six nights of self-imposed sleep deprivation at the camping farm are already making themselves felt. ‘It’s a fun but gruelling week – a real war of attrition. In the end, the winner is whoever copes best with little sleep’, observes Bekker. He ultimately finishes fifth, just missing out on a place in the IBO team, but fortunately the fifth-year student sees this final ‘a bit as training for next year’.

There is work to be done: on this morning the finalists tackle a microbiology practical in which they work in small groups to investigate how three bacterial strains – of Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and P. putida – function under anaerobic conditions with or without nitrate, and under aerobic conditions. ‘A challenging practical, derived from our core practical for bachelor’s students’, explains microbiologist Erwin Zoetendal, who supervises and assesses this component together with colleague Philippe Puylaert. ‘It trains them in proper aseptic technique and in analysis using a spectrophotometer – something they almost certainly don’t do every day at school’, says Zoetendal. He rates the level of the finalists – skimmed from the top after two selection rounds involving more than five thousand pupils from two hundred schools – as equivalent to second- or third-year bachelor’s students. ‘They have a high intrinsic motivation and a longer attention span than the average student, and they always want to know every last detail.’ Fifteen-year-old Jara Diemel, a fifth-year student at the Stedelijk Gymnasium Nijmegen, is enthusiastic about the training sessions. ‘We learn a lot of lab skills we never get at school: proper aseptic technique, pipetting under time pressure. What’s best of all is working with like-minded people and having fun at the same time. The dissection of a grasshopper in the body plans practical was incredibly fiddly and messy’, says Diemel, who is already certain she will study biology in 2026.

Meanwhile, Puylaert moves through the lab with a sensitive methane meter that the finalists are asked to breathe into. ‘Experience shows that it gives a positive reading in roughly one in eight people. Methane is a greenhouse gas, but it is otherwise harmless and has absolutely nothing to do with passing wind. It’s our lab tradition to award a “Highest CH₄ Level” trophy to whoever produces the most methane’, explains Puylaert. The trophy is presented shortly afterwards in the corridor to a mildly protesting participant – ‘I’d really rather not know this’ – who recorded a methane output of 16.2 parts per million. Diemel then has to ‘pay a forfeit’ for committing a lab ‘cardinal sin’: leaving a lit Bunsen burner unattended.

After the lunch break, the finalists head into the lab for a practical involving ten lettuce seedlings in which deletions have been introduced via CRISPR-Cas9. The mutations are present in the seedlings in either hetero- or homozygous form. ‘A mutant from my research into root genes’, explains molecular biologist Anneke Horstman. ‘With this, they learn to isolate DNA, to amplify it by PCR, and then to read out the differences in length using gel electrophoresis.’ As a first step, she recommends placing a piece of each lettuce seedling – roughly the size of ‘half a confetti disc’ – into each tube. Before long, the finalists are jostling around the seedlings with tweezers, and one remarks drily: ‘we’re getting plenty of lettuce, but nowhere near enough sleep’.

Ruben Winter, a 16-year-old pupil in his fourth year of pre-university education (vwo) at Stedelijk Gymnasium Leiden, won the 35th edition of the Dutch Biology Olympiad (NBO) on 6 June. An exceptional achievement, which has happened only once before. Winter had already won the Junior Biology Olympiad in 2024, and now convincingly beat twelve finalists from the sixth year of vwo and six from the fifth year, with a score of 426 points. From 20 July he will represent the Netherlands at the International Biology Olympiad in Quezon City (Philippines), alongside Marijn Vrolijk (17, vwo-6, Goese Lyceum, Goes, 397 points), Marieke Stolwijk (16, vwo-6, Johan van Oldenbarnevelt Gymnasium, Amersfoort, 396 points) and Lou Wouters (17, vwo-5, Augustinianum, Eindhoven, 376 points).