Exactly 12 months ago Izabelle Pretty from Coleambally and her mum Anne visited our club. This week Izabelle returned with her father Colin. Izabelle was partly sponsored by our Club to attend National Youth Science Forum (NYSF) and has been invited back to tell us about her experience attending NYSF.
The NYSF is a summer school programme dedicated to year eleven students who are thinking about a career in science, engineering and related disciplines to major scientific institutions and researchers. In 2022, a record 630 students joined the program, featuring 195 speakers and a combination of 73 live digital events, experiments and lectures.
Science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)
Izabelle and her very proud father, Colin.
In Izabelle’s own words.
“Thank you for sponsoring my NYSF experience. It was a great opportunity for me, one that I truly value. I had many new experiences regarding science, different aspects of STEM and to meet people both my age and those already working in the STEM field.
As you may be aware due COVID-19 the delivery of NYSF has changed. In the past it would normally run for two weeks in January in centres like Canberra where participants boarded together or on university campuses. This year it was meant to occur in January with some delivery via zoom and with some day visits to different sites in major centres like Canberra. Unfortunately, the whole January program was moved to zoom and even shorter site visit program in July.
I was most disappointed in January when the site visits in Canberra were cancelled. Via zoom I was able to hear many great speakers and see technology from around the world in use. We were given many options of presentations to participate in and at times it was hard to choose! Unfortunately though I was not able to meet the other students in person and as I am not one for spending a lot of time on social media or computers in general, I found it difficult to develop friendships online. We were assigned to groups with leaders who had attended a previous NYSF were in the evenings we did trivia, chatted and played games.
My long term Coleambally friend also participated in the NYSF so we·did get together in January and participate in some sessions jointly which gave us an opportunity to discuss what we were learning.
For me the highlights of the January sessions included presentations by big names in science such as Nobel Laureates Peter Doherty and Professor Brian Schmit. The live cross with CERN (the world's largest Hadron Collider) was amazing. Various scientists presented information on their careers and how they got to their current positions. I particularly enjoyed presentations by well known science communicators such as Teagan Taylor and Dr Karl.
In the July school holidays I was finally able to attend the in person. I really enjoyed this, being able to see facilities so different from my everyday life (in Coleambally and Albury for school). We got to choose between different sessions and I particularly enjoyed conducting DNA fingerprinting. I visited the Defence Science and Technology group, GEO Science Australia where we saw a model to demonstrate how ground water systems are connected and how toxins can affect these ground water systems. This was particularly relevant given Coleambally's town water is ground water. I went to the 3A Institute at ANU where I learned about coding.
As I said at the beginning, the NYSF has been a wonderful opportunity and experience for me. I have had the opportunity to engage with people already working in the science field and site visits. It also gave me the valuable experience of participating in an interview and presenting speeches to people I don't know! It is an opportunity I would highly recommend to anyone and I will be encouraging my younger sister and brother to attend when they are of age!
I must admit it has made it harder for me to settle on a career path! So far I have four early entry offers to universities in NSW and Victoria. Whatever I do it will be in the STEM field. The forum helped me to determine what areas of STEM I like and what I don't! Next year I am thinking of taking a gap year and am in the process of applying for a gap year in the army.
Once again thank you for your support in enabling me to attend such a valuable program.
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