Blake Nelligan, now a Year 12 student at Churchlands Senior High School, came along to tell us all about his experience as a participant in Rotary’s National Youth Science Forum (NYSF) which took place in January this year. NYSF has been going for just over 40 years and has hosted around 15,000 Year 12 students in total. The current CEO is Dr Melanie Bagg. This year the intake involved 510 students who were split between Canberra and Brisbane, and Blake chose to go to Brisbane because he has been to Canberra before. The program extended from 15th to 23rd January and it embraced the STEM approach to learning i.e. by combining Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics into a cross-disciplinary curriculum. This approach helps students to develop skills such as problem solving, critical thinking and creativity. Blake described each day of his experience in some detail, and backed up his talk with a range of slides. Examples of the activities were spending time at Griffith University to investigate ground water filtration techniques; and a day at the University of Queensland learning all about the UQ Space Rover Challenge and how their robots participated in a simulated lunar mission. Blake wants to study mining engineering at Curtin and hopes to do a Rotary Exchange in 2028. An impressive young lad who will certainly go places in this complex world!
