Institute hosts top school science students

Twenty of New Zealand’s brightest young minds have some searching questions in store for a panel of science role-models they will meet at the University of Auckland’s Liggins Institute on Monday 10 December.

The students are taking part in the annual Genesis Energy Realise the Dream event organized by the Royal Society of New Zealand (RSNZ), which includes a week visiting leading science organizations along the length of the North Island, ahead of a prize giving at Government House in Wellington on 14 December. The students won places in the event as a result of outstanding pieces of research or technological development they have undertaken during the year.

At the Liggins Institute they will participate in workshops and laboratory experiences within the Institute’s LENScience programme. A highlight of the event will be quizzing a panel, which represents excellence in NZ science at different career stages, on “The role of Science in NZ’s future”.

Representing an early career scientist on the panel is Graeme Fielder, himself a similarly outstanding high school student who went on to postgraduate research at the Liggins Institute before taking up his current role as Business Development Manager, Food Innovation at Plant and Food Research Ltd.

Mid-career panellist and Liggins Institute research fellow Dr Anna Ponnampalam is the winner of the 2012 Zonta Science Award, while Professor Christine Winterbourn (University of Otago) won NZ’s highest science accolade, the Rutherford Medal, in 2011. They are joined by RSNZ’s Debbie Woodhall, organiser of Realise the Dream.

The panel will discuss questions the students have submitted on topics including the importance of ethics in future research; the impact of lifestyle on future health and the environment; and whether future research in NZ is likely to target local rather than global problems.

The visit will be déjà vu for two of the students: winner of the 2012 Prime Minister’s Future Science Prize, Hannah Ng (St Cuthbert’s College) and Timothy Harker (Onehunga High School) who have both been part of the LENScience Students as Researchers science mentorship programme over the last four years. That programme provides scaffolded teaching and mentoring within the University environment to enable gifted and talented students to develop scientific research skills and engage with the University.

“Both students’ research is outstanding – as is their thinking,” observes LENScience Director Jacquie Bay, anticipating some lively discussion with Monday’s science panel.

Visit the Realise the Dream website: www.realisethedream.org.nz

Further information: Jacquie Bay, Director LENScience, email j.bay@auckland.ac.nz