James North at the National Science and Engineering Competition

As the London International Youth Science Forum of 2015 is fast approaching, I would like to offer my congratulations to Chelsea Herbert from Leicester Grammar UVI, who won her place at this year’s LIYSF through the National Science and Engineering Competition (NSEC). In March 2012 I received the same award as a result of exhibiting my research at NSEC and this year will be my 4th attending the forum.

In the summer of 2012 I carried out a research project on the innate immune system and its response to HIV and pneumonia co-infection. I was in a lab for 8 hours a day all summer whilst my friends were at festivals, needless to say feeling very jealous, but I could never have realised where the work would eventually take me. After presenting my report at a regional NSEC event in Liverpool, I was selected to go down to Birmingham for the national event.

This event was incredible for me as it was the first time that I was able to be surrounded by people who shared my passion for science. Almost all of us had given up summers, christmases or weekends in order to carry out our project and now was our chance to tell everyone else about it. For 5 days we were able to present our work to a huge variety of people, ranging from schoolchildren to professors. Alongside presenting to the public passing by, we were also judged on the quality of our research and our ability to communicate it to several judges, firstly for the main prizes and then for the specialist ones. Once I was talking to absolute strangers it was very hard to keep me quiet, as I'm sure Richard Myhill will attest to. The NSEC allows 11-18 year olds from all backgrounds, who have carried out their own work to bring it to a wider audience and share their passion. I learnt about all sorts of projects from maths, engineering through to botanical science but one thing that every participant had in common was their passion for their work.

At the closing awards ceremony I received the Society of Biology award and also a place at LIYSF. That night whilst it all sank in I went online to read about LIYSF and what the two weeks would entail. I was thrilled to learn that it would be similar to NSEC in that everyone there would be passionate about science but this time the participants would be from all over the world.

The two weeks I spent on the forum changed my views on not only science but also opened my horizons on life. One of my favourite memories from the forum is sitting in the common room late one night and just looking around me. I was sat with other young scientists from France, Spain, the USA and Israel discussing the evening’s lecture and we eventually got so far off topic that we strayed from science, to scientific policy, to government policy in general and then onto our daily lives.  What I loved was that we lived in countries whose views on science differed by a metaphorical gulf nearly as large as the physical one between us and yet, LIYSF had bridged that gap and made us friends. I still keep in contact with all the people from that night and regularly bounce ideas of my own off of them.

The following year I returned to the forum as a member of staff and had the pleasure of enabling others to have the same transformative experience as I had. It was also great to meet the participant who had won the NSEC prize and to talk to them about how much had changed in the year since I was in there shoes.

As I said at the start, this year will be my 4th forum and I’m sure it will again throw up many surprises and new experiences. As chief of staff there will be lots to organise in order to make sure the forum runs smoothly. However, I’m sure I will still find the time to sit down with participants from all over the globe, talk with them about science, share stories about our lives and mainly laugh with them again.