Tuesday 11 May, 2010
Dio student Kate Chatfield was one of just six New Zealand students chosen to attend Australia’s acclaimed National Youth Science Forumthis year says it was a life-changing experience that she will never forget.
“In two weeks I learnt more than I have ever done about science and also about myself,” says Kate, who was chosen as the Auckland representative to attend the fourm. The five other students came from Southland, Canterbury, the Bay of Plenty, Wellington and Northland.
The 17 year-old says her experience opened her eyes to a myriad of opportunities in the field of science, particularly physics, and also made her realise what a serious issue global warming is.
Kate was one of hundreds of Year 12 students from all over New Zealand who were first nominated by their schools last year to attend the annual Rotary National Science and Technology Forum in Auckland this January.
Of around 150 successful applicants for the New Zealand forum, six were then selected to go to the Australian forum as part of an exchange which also allows Australian students to come to New Zealand.
The high-powered forum in the Australian capital attracts some of the world’s top scientists as speakers and aims to expose science students – from countries including Mexico, Canada and Germany as well as Australia – to a wide range of study and career opportunities in science, technology and engineering.
Kate’s topics at the forum included physics, engineering, neuroscience, forensics and pharmacology and she went on a day trip to a deep space tracking station at Tidbinbilla near Canberra – one of the three tracking stations in the world that form the NASA Deep Space Network.
She also attended a video conference with scientists at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research which aims to find out what the universe is made of and how it works.
But she says a global warming presentation by a Copenhagen Scientist named Professor Ove Hoegh-Gulberg was the biggest eye-opener of the forum and it will influence a two-year research project she is doing as part of a three-year scholarship she has with the University of Auckland’s Liggins Institute.
Her agricultural research project in Te Kauwhata involves trying to find ways to use waste from cattle as a natural soil fertiliser which will promote crop growth and cut down on the use of commercial fertiliser without polluting waterways.
“When I started the research project at the beginning of last year, I was really not environmentally aware. But now I am really determined to focus on ways that we can protect the future of our land and the purity of our water.”
As well as attending lectures on public speaking and body language at the forum, Kate also gave a five-minute speech on how exercise affects the brains of people with Alzheimer’s – the topic she studied in the first year of her Liggins Institute scholarship.
Kate, who says she will probably apply to health sciences at the University of Otago next year, is not sure why she was chosen ahead of so many students to attend the forum.
“I’m not the smartest in my year. But I think they wanted people who would get along with others, and who weren’t afraid to talk and participate.”
Head of Science Sarah Boasman says the National Youth Science Forum provides students such as Kate with the once-in-a- lifetime opportunity to experience science in a different light.
“It also gives students the chance to see how each science specialisation doesn’t function in isolation but overlaps with a larger area,” says Ms Boasman.
“Students fortunate enough to be selected for these forums are exposed to science fields which they haven’t come across before and this can result in them selecting a totally different scientific career pathway.”