Australia’s best high school science brains ready to take on the world

Thirty-one of Australia’s best and brightest high school students will be unveiled on Monday as the country’s representatives to compete in the international science olympiads in coming months.

Jason Dunn is one of 31 Australian high school students selected to compete for Australia in the International Science Olympiads. Picture: Irene Dowdy/Supplied

Thirty-one of Australia’s best and brightest high school students will be unveiled on Monday as the country’s representatives to compete in the international science olympiads in coming months.

Among the line-up in the biology team is Jason Dunn, a year 12 student at Sydney Science College, for whom the competition in July takes on a familial element: his older sister competed in the exact same team nine years ago.

Manjekah Dunn, now a paediatric trainee in Sydney, said she was happy to give up the mantle of the family’s biology olympiad whiz.

“I hope he one-ups me,” she said. “I got a bronze, I have high hopes for him.”

Jason attributes his love of biology to his older sister.

“When I was young, I was always quite interested in science in general,” he said. “I would watch science videos on YouTube and everything.

“From a young age, I guess, she kind of indoctrinated me with a lot of science knowledge and would tell me cool facts and interesting information.

“That just really caught on with me. As I grew older, that passion just continued to expand and I would read science books.”

In July, Jason will travel to the United Arab Emirates with his three teammates to compete against the world’s brightest biology students.

“We are quite close as a result of all our training together,” he said. “It’s actually quite surprising how closely you can bond over a short period of time. You’re doing everything together.”

Jason said he was looking forward to being shown around the UAE.

“Mine was in Bali, Indonesia,” Manjekah recalled.

“I think the UAE is a lot more exotic than Bali,” she joked, “but it was exotic to me back then.”

On Monday, Jason – along with 30 other contenders in subjects like chemistry, earth science, informatics, maths and physics – will be at Parliament House in Canberra to be unveiled by Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic.

Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic. Picture: Lachie Millard

They come from 24 different schools scattered across the country, and will compete with more than 1900 students from 104 different countries.

Jason and Manjekah aren’t the only sibling acts in this year’s field – William Cheah from Scotch College follows his brother Matthew in the maths olympiad, and twin sisters Cloris and Iris Xu from Sydney’s Baulkham Hills High School are also on this year’s maths team.

Like the twin sisters, James Ferry and James Strickland on the earth science team hail from the same school, St Aloysius’ in Sydney, as do math’s William Cheah and Zian Shang from Scotch College in Melbourne.

St Aloysius' student James Strickland. Picture: Supplied

St Aloysius' student James Ferry. Picture: Supplied

Regional participants include Jason’s teammate Alex Park from Victoria’s Werribee High School and earth science competitor Sydney Richter from Cairns State High School.

The 31 Australian representatives went through a gauntlet of rigorous testing to reach final selection – testing to be selected for learning and training at the ANU in Canberra, and then another round of testing to be selected for the representative teams.

Jason said he would like to study medicine in university to become a GP. “I think it’s just a very calming job,” he said.

Manjekah said the olympiad was “probably the thing that I’m the most proud of and really changed my life”.

“I think it gave me a lot of confidence to just say yes to opportunities, to not be afraid to put myself out there in really challenging situations.

“I think often before that I didn’t have the confidence to try new things or to put myself in challenging moments and I think after this it gave me a lot of that self-confidence to do that.”

Full list of competitors below:

Biology:

• Jason Dunn / NSW / Sydney Science College
• James Johnson / Victoria / Haileybury College
• Angus Kiang / NSW / Smith’s Hill High School
• Jonghyeon (Alex) Park / Victoria / Werribee Secondary College

Chemistry:

• George Chen / NSW / Shore School
• Kevin Lin / NSW / Knox Grammar School
• Hanlin (James) Wu / NSW / Sydney Grammar School
• Bobby Wu / NSW / Normanhurst Boys High School

Earth Science:

• David Brown / Tasmania / Launceston Christian School
• Seth Cahill / NSW / Chatswood High School
• James Ferry / NSW / St Aloysius’ College
• Henry Morgan / ACT / Brindabella Christian College
• Sydney Richter / Queensland / Cairns State High School
• James Strickland / NSW / St Aloysius’ College
• Penny Tassicker / Tasmania / Marist Regional College
• Cathy Zhang / NSW / James Ruse Agricultural High School

Informatics:

• Miles Conway / Victoria / Melbourne Grammar School
• Jerry Li / NSW / James Ruse Agricultural High School
• Evan Lin / Victoria / Melbourne High School
• Arthur Sun / Victoria / Scotch College

Maths:

• William Cheah / Victoria / Scotch College
• Sizhe Pan / NSW / James Ruse Agricultural High School
• Zian Shang / Victoria / Scotch College
• Christopher Tran / Victoria / The University High School
• Cloris Xu / NSW / Baulkham Hills High School
• Iris Xu / NSW / Baulkham Hills High School

Physics:

• Kelvin Chan / Queensland / ALD Academy for Science, Mathematics, and Technology
• Liam Chen / Victoria / Scotch College
• Susan He / NSW / James Ruse Agricultural High School
• Douglas Joshi / Victoria / Balwyn High School
• Alastair Murphy / Victoria / Trinity Grammar School Kew