The London International Youth Science Forum is a two week residentialevent that brings together the very best in science and cultural interaction at the international level and is under the patronage of UNESCO. Eight Grade 12 students, Asra Shah,Misha Singh,KrishaSanghai, Ayush Kumar, Aditya Seth, RitvikGoradia, VibhavAmarbabu and ShivangRaisurana, attended the 61st session of LIYSF held at Imperial College London from 24th July, 2019 to 7th August, 2019.

The theme at this year’s forum, ‘Science at the Interface’, wasan interesting one that highlightedthe importance of interdisciplinary collaborations between scientists from a range of different backgrounds and in the broader context of society, ethics, business and government.

The plenary lectures held at the Royal Geographical Society were attended by all 500 students from more than 75 countries. These lectures covered a variety of STEM fields ranging from Artificial Intelligence, Astrophysics and Quantum Mechanics to Biochemistry, Smart Materials and Medical Physics. These lectures were delivered by renowned scientists such as Sir VenkiRamkrishnanwho won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2009 and Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell who discovered pulsars as a graduate student in radio astronomy.Dr Anna Ploszajski’slecture was extremely interesting as she spoke about Smart Materials thatcan react, sense, change colour and morph in response to the outside world, promising to revolutionise the way we live.

Students had the opportunity to tailor their programme to suit their STEM interests by attending specialist lectures of their choice on topics such as Cancer Treatment by Cytoskeletal Manipulations, Recommender System AI, Fetal Gene Therapy and Future Robotic Space Exploration Missions to Mars.

On our scientific visits in and around London we visited laboratories carrying out cutting edge research such as the Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre which is set to become Europe’s top facility for brain imaging , the BMW Mini Plant at Oxford University, the Cambridge University Biomedical Reasearch Centre which included a visit to the research labs at Addenbrooke’s Hospital and HR Wallingford, a civil engineering and environmental hydraulics consultancy home to the UK ship simulation centre.

Asra Shah, Misha Singh, Ayush Kumar, Aditya Seth, VibhavAmarbabu and ShivangRaisurana presented original research projects at the LIYSF Science Bazaar Evening in the form of posters. The poster project evening was aimed at developing the essential skill of science communication in scientists. Ayush Kumar’s project on ‘Designing an EfficientThermal Dissipation System for LEDs’ was among the eleven projects that were selected to be presented in the FameLab LIYSF evening.

Apart from lectures and visits, we also had the opportunity to interact with young, budding scientists from across the globe. Social events like the LIYSF Sports Day, the Great Crossword Treasure Hunt and the Traditions of Home evening where our group of eight performed a Bollywood dance, facilitated cultural interaction.

The fortnight we spent at LIYSF was an enriching and inspiring learning experience for all us both in terms of the tremendous knowledge we gained from eminent scientists in a vast variety of STEM fields and in terms of the other student partcipantsfrom across the globe with whom we interacted.

Misha Singh

XII B