Canowindra High School student Will Wright has been successful in both receiving a Victor Chang Award for achievements in science and earning a spot at the National Youth Science Forum next year.
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Will is one of thirty-four students from Western NSW to be named a Victor Chang Award recipient and will receive his award at a ceremony in Dubbo next week.
“You get nominated by your school and I think just one student from each school is chosen,” Will said,
“It’s pretty good, it feels pretty special to be selected for something like that.”
The Year 11 student was also then picked to head along to the National Youth Science Forum (NYSF) at the Australian National University in Canberra in January 2018.
“You have to apply to your local Rotary Club. Canowindra doesn’t have one so I applied at Cowra and I got through that,” he said.
He then went onto the second stage of the application, where students selected gathered in Grenfell and were interviewed.
“So I got selected in that second stage, there was just an interview panel and that was pretty good and… they notified me and I guess I’m going away in January,” he said.
“My marks which were luckily good… they asked about what your interests were, to explain some scientific thing so I talked about solar panels, it’s pretty cool how they work and then what areas of science you’re interested in and what do you want out of the conference and what can you give back.”
He said 200 students from across Australia will attend the forum who will be split into focused groups, go on field trips, attend lectures and network with industry professionals.
“You just get to talk and share your knowledge and have a good time with like-minded students. We had our orientation the other day and it got me really excited, I can’t wait.”
With an obvious love of science, Will hopes to pursue his passion in the future and is aiming for ANU.
“Just something science related, I’ve looked at medicine or pharmacy or environmental science. I’ve been looking at engineering recently which is more maths but yeah anything really.”
“Science is my absolute favourite class, chemistry is the best,” he said.