Bionaturology
The only times I cried…
Before I learned to read where the times when I wanted beautiful toys. Once it was (obviously) for Barbie. And then it was for a collection of figures of dinosaurs and a collection of figures of domestic animals, as you can see on the right. In my hands is “Bobosya” (the cutest Gorilla that belonged to my sister Greta Babakhanova).
Inspired by the timeless works of Ernst Haeckel…
At the age of 12, I was curious to make my own modern take on describing and depicting biodiversity. I realized, that there is no consensus between genetic and morphological trees of life. Thus, I used TOLweb as well as books on Plant Anatomy and Systematics and Animal Morphology and Systematics to come up with my own cladistic (clade = a common ancestor and all her descendants) mapping and illustrations.
International Biology Olympiads
Joining the Biological Olympic Club (mentored by Prof Nikoyan and later by her student Vardges Tserunyan, the first IBO medalist from Armenia), I started systematizing my knowledge in Biology and within a matter of two months learned to win First Place at National Biology Olympiad. Subsequently, I brought two (highest score in my team) medals from IBOs (2014, Indonesia and 2015, Denmark).
Here on the right you can see all the people from Yerevan Physics Mathematics school who got medals from International Olympiads, where, unfortunately, 99% are male students.
Biology is a teamwork
In contrast to many of my peers worldwide, I did not have access to bio-equipment and self-taught while volunteering in the Red Cross HIV clinic and STI diagnostics lab. Under leadership of Prof Ghukasyan, our learned directly from researchers in Molecular Biology, Physiology, and Microbiology Research Institutes. We were very united, we manufactured devices such as a reptile cardiac electrophysiology apparatus. In fact, I was so used to our knit team in IBO Armenia (mentored by Lusine Hovhannisyan), that my nickname in Saint Petersburg’s Olympic Biology team was ‘a grit’ because it makes up the pearl kernel in a mollusk similarly how I crystallized a community around myself among the people that were previously hostile competitors but became a united team and lifelong friends.
On the picture is three of us from IBO Armenia (me, Arman Simonyan, Hasmik Avagyan) with our first IBO medals.
Comedy and storytelling in Biology
Our team made videos about our studies at many genres that were presented at International Biology Olympiad Video Competitions.
