Clare with her mother Jack Billings and Brian Illiffe.
In 2013 the Catenian Youth Project supported Clare a St Norbert College year 12 pupil.
She was one of only ten Australians chosen to attend the London International Youth Science Forum and she was able to visit some of the most prestigious scientific establishments in Europe.
She told us then “I was also privileged to visit a Space Science Laboratory run by the University College of London, where they were building mechanical and electrical components for satellites,” As LIYSF students, we were allowed to see parts of these research establishments not normally open to the public.”
A number of prestigious speakers gave expert lectures at the LIYSF, covering a wide range of topics such as Dark Matter, medicines in Third World countries, Photomedicine, the need to reduce our carbon consumption in an increasingly industrial world and Gene Therapy.
“We engaged in student debates on controversial topics, such as whether or not there should be collaboration between the core sciences, and whether Globalisation has caused a compromise in scientific ethics,” added Clare.
The forum wasn’t all about work and the social program gave participants an opportunity to meet likeminded students from all around the world.
After the forum, 30 lucky participants continued on to Paris and Geneva where they were hosted by CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research.
“We had the amazing opportunity to go underground and see the Large Hadron Collinder (LHC), the largest particle accelerator in the world.”
Clare commence a Bachelor
of Science in Pharmacology and Physiology in 2014 at the University of Western
Australia which she completed in 2016.
She is in my second-last year of medicine at UWA. She is studying in Northam this year as part of a program called Rural Clinical School, where medical students spend a year in a rural community in the hope that they will return to the country as qualified doctors. She hopes eventually to do obstetrics – so in January 2020 she has a 4 week placement in Obstetrics and Gynaecology in London to get a bit more of a taste of it.
At present she is living in Northam this year until the end of November 2019. (hence the rural shot)
