Former student Megan to mentor Y12 physicists for ORBYTS 2022-23

Megan is the second named author on her ORBYTS paper (published in 2018) as she went way beyond what anyone expected and even went in to UCL to run computations after finishing her A level exams. It is no surprise that she is now a successful academic and she will be an amazing mentor to our students this year.

So far an astonishing 61 Highams Park 6th Form students have been published as named as co-authors in 6 academic papers.  That they have done so based on work they did whilst at secondary school is incredible and a testament to their hard work and that of their UCL mentors.

We are very lucky to be able to continue the partnership we have with UCL and this is now the 6th year in a row that we have taken part in the programme. You may not know that ORBYTS was the brainchild of former Highams Park physics teacher Dr Clara Sousa-Silva, who worked with Megan and our other students in the first year of ORBYTS in 2017. Unfortunately for us, Clara was then head-hunted by MIT! She is currently the director for the Harvard-MIT Science Research Mentoring Program and the JURA program, where she helps kids perform astrophysics research.

ORBYTS has since grown into a multi-award-winning movement that partners scientists with schools to empower school students to undertake world-leading research. We are hugely thankful to UCL for continuing to provide this opportunity to the school free of charge as part of their goal to address diversity issues in science. 

With Megan returning to mentor students on a programme she was such a successful participant of herself, seems like some kind of hugely appropriate full circle! We look forward to hearing more about what the students learn about with Megan from their updates that they will post here on Firefly.