2024 Essay Competition

Call for Essays

In November 2023, IOCD launched the second year of its annual essay competition on the role of the chemical sciences in sustainability, in collaboration with the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). See here. The competition is open globally to entrants under 35 years of age on the closing date of 31 March 2024. The theme for the 2024 competition is:

How can the chemical sciences contribute to ‘decarbonizing’ the production of energy and to eliminating the generation or release of greenhouse gasses from large-scale manufacturing and agricultural processes?

Essays will be grouped into seven regions for the selection of winners, based on the entrant’s country of normal residence. Each regional winner will receive a prize of US$500 and their entries will be published in RSC Sustainability. The shortlisted essays selected as Finalists will be collected in an annual compendium, Young Voices in the Chemical Sciences for Sustainability, published as a PDF online and available on IOCD’s website. Individual shortlisted entries will also be featured from time to time on IOCD’s website. See here for the 2023 regional winners and finalists. The seven regional groupings are:

East Asia & Pacific
Europe & Central Asia
Latin America & Caribbean
Middle East & North Africa
North America
South Asia
Sub-Saharan Africa

Broad flexibility will be applied in assessing the approach taken by entrants to framing the theme. Essays will be judged on how well they highlight the importance of scientific approaches grounded in the chemical sciences for solving sustainability challenges. Entrants are encouraged to take a wide, global perspective, including reflecting on the intersection of science, society and policy aspects, rather than to describe a particular scientific advance in great technical detail. Entrants should create their own title for their essay, related to the theme set. Essays must not exceed 1500 words of main text.

The following downloads are available:

2024 Essay Competition Rules and Guidance Note here.
2024 Entry Form here.

Call for Volunteer Evaluators

IOCD invites volunteers from around the world to assist in the evaluation of the entries for the 2024 competition. Volunteers should have a postgraduate degree/experience in a field related to the role of the chemical sciences in sustainable development (whether in education, research or industry) and be willing to undertake scoring according to set criteria and commenting qualitatively on up to 20 essays during the period March-May 2024. Every volunteer will receive a Certificate acknowledging their contribution to the competition.

IOCD is seeking more evaluators. An application form to register as a volunteer can be downloaded here.