About INST

International Natural Sciences Tournament

INST is active and challenging competition in natural sciences between young scientists. Undergraduate and Master's students compete with each other in applied Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Engineering, and Pharmaceuticals. The global mission of the INST is to give students the possibility to believe in themselves and come up with the idea that their knowledge can change the world. The local mission of the INST is to change the educational system in a better way, to help everyone present their ideas clearly, and defend them correctly.

History

Science tournaments started to develop in Saint Petersburg at the 2000s. The first tournament for school students was organized in 2000. The second one took place in 2001 and after that, there was a 5-year break. Only in 2006, tournament activity started again in Saint Petersburg. The organizing committee headed by student Sergey Safonov started a new age of science tournaments in Russia. In 2006-2009, there only was a local chemical tournament for school students. In 2010, the first university students tournament started. The name International Natural Sciences Tournament (INST) was invented in 2011, and from that year student tournaments became not only international but also interdisciplinary. Every year International Natural Sciences Tournament attracts brightest minds from different countries. Students from more than 25 countries participated in the Tournament of all time: Indonesia, India, Russia, Malaysia, Ukraine, Portugal, Belarus, Germany, Czech Republic, Canada, Italy, Poland, USA, China, Japan, Singapore, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Serbia, UK, Spain, Brazil, Guatemala, Colombia, Lebanon, and South Africa.

Winners of INSTs

Year	Name of team	Captain	Organization	Country	Tournament
2010	KNU	Alexandra Souvorova	Kyiv National University	Ukraine	Russian-speaking tournament
2011	KNU	Konstantyn Nifantiev	Kyiv National University	Ukraine	Russian-speaking tournament
2012	NSU-1	Ivan Serbin	Novosibirsk State University	Russia	Russian-speaking tournament
2013	SPbU	Anastasia Ananyan	Saint-Petersburg State University	Russia	Russian-speaking tournament
2014	ChemTeam	Bogdan Sakhnevich	Tomsk Polytechnic University Saint Petersburg State University	Russia	English-speaking tournament
2014	Chuck-chuck Norris	Mikhail Yagofarov	Kazan Federal University	Russia	Russian-speaking tournament
2015	Chuck-chuck Norris	Mikhail Yagofarov	Kazan Federal University	Russia	English-speaking tournament
2016	KiasuNUSPS	Tan Jin Hui	National University of Singapore	Singapore	Grand final of INST
2016	Goryachiye Sibirskiye Muzhchiny	Edgar Makarov	Novosibirsk State University	Russia	Russian-speaking tournament
2017	Entropia	Olga Sokolovskaya	Belarusian State University Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology	Belarus/Russia	Russian-speaking tournament
2018	Micks	Kim Mu Young	National University of Singapore	Singapore	Grand final of INST
2018	Prosto dobav' vody	Ekaterina Malysheva	SkolTech	Russia	Russian-speaking tournament
2019	UFS	Shaun Redgard	University of Free State	South Africa	Grand final of INST
2020	NS. United	Rodion Ivaschenko	Novosibirsk State University	Russia	Grand final of INST

A list of cities where INST took place

INST's stages
Year	City, country
2014	Saint Petersburg, Russia
2015	Saint Petersburg, Russia
2016	Novosibirsk, Russia
2018	Agra, India
2019	Tallinn, Estonia
2020	Warsaw, Poland

Short Rules

INST is a team competition for current undergraduate students and students getting Bachelor’s or Master’s diploma in 2020. A team, participating in the Tournament, should consist of 3–5 people. Students should have one of the following specializations: Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Medicine, Pharmaceuticals, or Engineering. The team members should choose a captain amongst themselves. The captain is the leader of the team during the Tournament and is responsible for interacting with the Organizing committee and the Jury board. The team can be supported by a coach, a person with a completed Master’s degree (graduated no later than 2019, otherwise he/she will not be able to participate as a Jury member) or higher.

The Tournament consists of Extramural round (online) and Grand final (offline). To participate in the Grand final, participants need to qualify in the Extramural round. The Extramural round problems are available on the website, where participants have to register and upload their solutions. You can also assess Grand final through Qualifying rounds. This year tournament includes:

-The Qualifying round "ТЕН" is traditionally held in Saint Petersburg State University for any Russian-speaking team. The Extramural round deadline: September 6, 2020. The Intramural round dates: November 18-24, 2020. More information about the Qualifying round may be found here: Турнир Естественных Наук.

The Grand final consists of a number of cycles. A cycle is a complete set of 3 or 4 challenges in one section depending on a number of teams in the section. A challenge is a sequence of actions in discussing a single problem. Three teams take part in a challenge: the reporting team, the opposing team and the reviewing team. During the challenge, participants are prohibited from using any information sources (literature, laptops, tablets, e-books, mobile phones, etc.). In one cycle, every team acts once as a Speaker, once as an Opponent, and once as a Reviewer. Participants should be creative, confident and be able to uphold their variants of solving industrial problems to others. The scheme of the Grand final is presented below.