About the contest

Chemistry·Communication Challenge (also called Chem-dot-Comm) is a biannual event organised by the Department of Chemistry, National University of Singapore and the Singapore National Institute of Chemistry (SNIC) with the help of the Ministry of Education. The contest, previously known as the Chemistry Speech Contest was first organised in the 1970s with sponsorships from various foundations and industrial companies.

Throughout the years, the competition has aimed at providing secondary school students nationwide an introduction to advanced topics in chemical sciences and their unlimited applications vital to our industry, economy and society.

Contest format

This is a vital opportunity to expose your students to public speaking before their peers and teachers, as well as engage them in exploring new ideas and deeper understanding of significant topics in chemistry. Such competitions will motivate students to attain higher standard of scientific oral communication by competing against, and learning from their peers nationwide.

Chemistry·Communication Challenge is held in two languages: English and Mandarin Chinese, and implements a web-based presentation. Participating schools are encouraged to use information technology (IT) to demonstrate difficult chemical concepts. The key advantages of IT are the ease of employing multimedia presentations in place of live demonstrations, as well as interactivity. We hope, through the challenge, participants will develop innovative techniques to highlight and convey difficult scientific concepts in an effective and informative manner.

The winners (Champion, 1st Runner-up, 2nd Runner-up, two Meritorious Awards and Best Speaker Awards) will be awarded with book vouchers, medals/trophies, souvenirs and Certificate of Merit for the harvest of their hard work. A trophy for each language category was made especially for this competition. It symbolizes the unusual and novel nature of the Chemistry·Communication Challenge. The champion teams will be able to keep the challenge trophy for one month.