The Clock strikes WON'

Samay Godika, a Bengaluru boy and student of National Public School, has made the city and the country proud by winning the fourth edition of the Breakthrough Junior Challenge. He bagged a whopping Rs 2.9 crores ($400,000) by winning the competition.

Breakthrough Junior Challenge is an international science video making competition that aims to bring to the fore the ability to grasp scientific concepts and communicate them in an interesting way. The competition required Samay to make a three minute video explaining a concept he found interesting. The video explains the molecular basis of circadian rhythm, that is, body clock and how it is genetically controlled.

Pramila Menon, his Biology teacher also won $50,000 and $100,000 that went to the science lab of his school.

Samay says, “I suffer from asthma and these attacks happen throughout the year. One thing I noticed is that it happens mostly in the early hours. When researched further, I came across the topic of circadian rhythm, reading more into it I realised it was much more vast than just what it was labelled as; a sleep cycle.” 

Recalling the preparations and efforts put in, Pramila, his teacher says, “Samay has been an avid Youtuber. He came to know of the challenge first and expressed an interest in it. He’s a very motivated student who dreams and thinks big. So, he took up this challenge. He started preparing for this video immediately after realising that he’d closely missed winning last year’s challenge, in December 2017. We brainstormed on a suitable topic. He’d read about circadian rhythm and asked me about it. I read through the topic and explained the concept to him. The challenge requires an interesting script that can be picturised. Samay worked on the script, sending me the manuscript to check.”

Samay adds, “I decided to split the video into various parts, throw in interesting facts to catch the attention of the viewer, added analogies and metaphors. My interest in making YouTube videos aided me in making the video. I just had to combine two of my interests; science and video making.”

His teacher also believes that it is important for students to grasp concepts and try and apply them. Any subject knowledge is realised to its potential only when applied and made useful.

Samay has won $250,000 towards his tuition. His education will be taken care of and he can choose any university in the world. His parents are hoping that the university he chooses will accept him. 

His mother Vidya Laxman, is beaming with pride, “It was a lot of hard work as he is in 11th grade and has to shuttle between school work, external exam preparations and internal exams too. It requires lot of discipline and focus as he didn’t want his grades to slip. He has taken part in the competition earlier too and has seen strangers selflessly supporting him. He learnt to be grateful in the whole process with the kind of love and support he received from total strangers. Secondly, he competed with the best students from around the world and learnt a lot.”

She further recalls that Samay has been taking part in competitions and uses this forum to test his resilience and also learn from others. At the age of 14 he applied for the MIT launch programme and was one of the 70 students to be chosen.