PROVIDENCE smiled on six young souls from the University of Negros Occidental-Recoletos Integrated School (UNO-R IS) four months after they clicked "submit" on the first day of February 2020, when their names were called onstage to receive one of the most coveted student research awards in the country -- Champions of the UP Alchemes Research Fair 2020 Research Competition.

Grade 12 Stem-Medicine and Allied Health (MAH) students Dane Claudelle Abalayan, Maria Ella Bagaforo, and Francis Raymund Garcia won the Life Science category of RF2020 Research Competition with a study entitled "Structure-Based Virtual Screening of Seaweed Metabolites as Potential Acetylcholinesterase Inhibitors."

Both teams were coached by adviser Jude Xerxes Herbolario, and were joined by 23 senior high school and three junior high school students in the Youth Science Convention, alongside faculty advisers Maria Cindy Gabutas, Joy Borcelas, Joemar Flores, and Jen Navarro.

Research competitions like RF2020, which is organized by the UP Academic League of Chemical Engineering students and held at the University of the Philippines-Diliman, are the battlegrounds of research students from some of the best high schools in the country and are judged by some of the most respected experts in different fields. Even then, the UNO-Rians were not fazed and saw opportunity in competition.