Science forum determines career

Photo: SHANE WENZLICK

INFLUENCING CHANGE: Kate Chatfield, 17, wants to make the world a better place through science.

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Attending a two-week science forum was a "life-changing" experience for Kate Chatfield.

The 17-year-old says it exposed her to things she had never thought about and helped her decide she wants a career in the science field.

Kate was the only Aucklander chosen to attend the National Youth Science Forum in Australia in January.

The forum attracts some of the world’s top scientists as speakers and brings together students from countries throughout the world – including Mexico, Canada and Germany.

The Kohimarama teenager was put forward by Diocesan School for Girls, which she has been attending since year 1.

She was surprised to have been selected but is pleased she had the opportunity to see and do things she had only dreamed of.

"I’m not the smartest in my year. But I think they wanted people who would get along with others, and who weren’t afraid to talk and participate," she says.

"I made a group of friends over there that I talk to every day now."

Kate’s topics at the forum included physics, neuroscience and forensics and she went on a day trip to a deep space tracking station near Canberra – one of the three tracking stations in the world that form the NASA Deep Space Network.

The station "is in the middle of nowhere," she says, "so you can hear the whispers of space".

They got to look at images of space, including Mars "where the sky is red and the sunset is blue ... and there is a little dot in the corner that is Earth".

She says a global warming presentation by a Copenhagen scientist was the biggest eye-opener and it will influence a two-year research project she is doing as part of a three-year scholarship she has with Auckland University’s Liggins Institute.

Her project is investigating ways to use sorghum, a type of grass, to feed cattle and then use their manure to grow the crop.

The year 13 student says it has hardly been researched and could provide an alternative to the use of commercial fertilisers. "When I started the research project at the beginning of last year, I was not environmentally aware. But now I am determined to focus on
ways that we can protect the future of our land and the purity of our water."

- © Fairfax NZ News