An 18-year-old Filipino student from Leyte wins global student competition out of 11,000 students from 178 nations competed for the third annual Breakthrough Junior Challenge (BJC) Prize, over ₱ 20 M worth of prizes. Hillary had received 250,000 U.S. dollars’ worth of college scholarship, 100,000 U.S. dollars Breakthrough Prize Lab for her school and 50,000 U.S. dollars for her science teacher.

From the Philippine Science High School (PSHS) Eastern Visayas Campus in Palo, Leyte, Hillary Diane Andales, 18 won the award on December 3, 2017 in California, at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Ames Research Center. She is the first Filipino to win the award.

This is the third year of the competition making students show their critical thinking and creativity about science.

Those who are qualified compete are students with ages 13-18 years old and were judged according in his/her engagement, creativity, illumination and difficulty.

Andales shined the most because of her explanation in a 3 minute Breakthrough Prize Foundation video regarding complicated Relativity and Equivalence of Reference Frames. Her video last year gained more than 300,000 views and she won the Top Popular Vote.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan with Julia Milner, funded the Breakthrough Prize foundation.

Many are proud of her especially PSHS EV Director, Rey Garnace.  According to his statement on Wednesday, Hillary is their school’s pride and justified the vision of the school for having a passion of excellence, pursuing truth and service to the country.

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