Meet the Wellingtonian who started a global STEM conference

There are those let things happen and those who make things happen. Nicholas falls decidedly in that latter category. The year 12 pupil was inspired by a virtual conference our geography teachers held last year. "All of these speakers and pupils from other schools got together on Zoom to share ideas and learn together," Nicholas explains. "I thought, 'Why not do something like this for STEM studies?'"

Nicholas immediately got to work and started mapping out a plan for what he would eventually call the Global Students STEM Conference, a virtual meeting where pupils, teachers and professionals could share ideas on all things science, technology, engineering and maths. 

This required him to venture out of his comfort zone. "Ask any of my friends and they will tell you that I have always been really bad at organising and planning things," Nicholas muses. Nevertheless, he cleared this hurdle and started sending off emails to teachers and fellow pupils to gauge interest.

The conference needed a website, too. So, over the summer, he taught himself the coding required to make this happen. "The only expense was the 100 RMB I paid to get a domain name and set up an email address," he says.

Five months and several hundred emails later, things began to materialise. The dates were set for the conference: 7-8 October 2021. By then, he had assembled an impressive roster of speakers from globally recognised institutions, such as CERN and Oxford Engineering.

He had also compiled an equally impressive list of fellow pupils and young entrepreneurs to join in and talk about their projects. One was from Sydney, Australia and had coded his first app at age 15; it has been downloaded 250,000 times so far. Another speaker was a high school pupil who had interned at Cambridge to study AI. He has three patents and has already started his own company.

The conference boasted 225 registrants, and because it was officially recognised by FOBISIA, several in attendance were teachers who used it as an educational tool in their classrooms. "We had attendees logging in from every continent but Antarctica!" Nicholas adds.

Participants had the opportunity to interact and ask questions to educators and professionals while gaining valuable insight and experience from older pupils who are already quite accomplished in STEM. "And that was just the webinar portion of the event," Nicolas adds. "There were several pupil-organised workshops and debates on bio-ethics, AI and Physics."

The website Nicholas developed has since become a valuable resource for any pupil pursuing studies in STEM as well. "We aim to publish a new paper every week. They are interdisciplinary — AI  and Robotics, for instance, or ecology and chemistry." Currently, he and his fellow pupils are working on an article that lays out effective strategies for reading research papers.

Looking ahead, Nicholas has long-term plans for Global Students STEM Conferences. "We want to do smaller conferences more often. The next one will probably be in January," he explains. Moreover, he hopes to build enough interest in the project that other Wellingtonian's will continue on with it after he graduates next year.

Not surprisingly, his self-starting spirit has garnered attention from our staff too. "A huge congratulations to Nicholas for this incredible achievement," Dr Charles Debieux, Wellington's Director of Science and Technology, says. "The courage and leadership he has shown is a great example of what it means to be a Wellingtonian."