Student starts science journalism contest with 2 others, uses his scholarship funds for prize money

Straits Times

20-07-2025

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(From left) Lee Zhe Yu, Nathan, Chiu Yee Seen and Elijah Chew Ze Feng, co-founders of the Singapore Biology Reporting Challenge.
SINGAPORE – In many scientific papers, the term 'macroautophagy' had been described as 'the sequestration of cytoplasmic material in double -membrane vesicles, which later fuse with lysosomes for the digestion of luminal content'.
But when a fellow schoolmate rephrased it as 'the intentional 'self-eating' and destruction of organelles by a cell', the idea of having a science journalism competition came to a group of Raffles Institution (RI) students.
The brainchild of Elijah Chew, 17, and two of his schoolmates at RI, the inaugural Singapore Biology Reporting Challenge 2025 is open to students from secondary schools, junior colleges and polytechnics.
The winner, runner-up and second runner-up will walk away with $50, $30 and $20 respectively. The money will come from Elijah's scholarship stipend.
Elijah said he felt that more accessible content is needed to motivate students to be interested in science journals. And he believes a competition for science journalism could promote better science storytelling.
While Elijah and the competition's other co-founders – Nathan Lee, 16, and Chiu Yee Seen, 17 – understand that scientific papers must be as precise and complete as possible, they are mostly obscure, esoteric and inaccessible for many readers.
'Reading scholarly work is greatly beneficial to life in general. Being able to pick out flaws in reasoning and affirm strong hypotheses can help protect readers from misleading information,' said Elijah .
Open till Aug 20, the challenge invites students to submit stories on chemistry, biological science, medical science as well as other science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields.
The submissions – each of a maximum of 1,000 words – can include explainers of published research work, feature stories from novel interviews and commentaries on historical findings. Images, diagrams and infographics are also accepted.
The entries will be judged on content relevance, clarity, structure, accuracy, creativity and grammar.
Regarding the prize money, Elijah said: 'The school granted me the scholarship on condition that I would use the money for something related to my Raffles Academy programmes: biology and chemistry. So, I figured I might as well dedicate some of this money to the competition.'
Raffles Academy is a talent development programme for RI students who demonstrate an aptitude for, and interest in, the advanced study of mathematics and science .
The winning entries will be considered for publication in the science pages of The Straits Times.
The top three winning entries will also be featured on Project BioLogical, a website Elijah and 16 other schoolmates founded in January to promote science storytelling that can be understood by lower secondary students.
Project BioLogical now has a team of 27 writers from Year 1 to 6 at RI. It carries stories across a range of topics. The topics include anatomy and pathology; biotechnology and engineering; cell biology and microbiology; ecology and the environment; molecular biology and biochemistry; psychology and psychiatry; and ethics.
The latest stories include a feature on insect biohacking, an analysis of the pathology of Alzheimer's and a study guide on epigenetic modifications (the process of activating or deactivating specific genes without altering the DNA sequence).
Elijah's foray into science reporting began when he joined a student-run publication club – called Raffles Publications – when he enrolled in RI in 2019. There, he honed his craft for writing and storytelling, and developed a greater appreciation for the art of science reporting.
He said: 'A lot of students in Singapore grew up reading the Young Scientist and National Geographic Kids magazines . But a lot of students don't realise someone had to write those magazines.'
While he laments he would soon have to put this pursuit on the back-burner in preparation for his A-level exams, he is also optimistic about the future of Project BioLogical.
His most memorable experience is covering the inaugural United Water Conference on May 30, organised by a student of the United World College of South East Asia.
Featured in Project BioLogical, Elijah wrote a first-hand account of the lessons learnt from the conference on the importance of getting youth involved with water conservation and sustainability.
'People always say: Make science come alive. But the only way to really make science come alive is to make it part of life,' he said.