After his stellar achievement of being chosen to represent the UK in a space competition hosted by NASA, Year 13’s Vinujan Sivakumar is now helping younger Elizabethans hoping to follow in his footsteps.
QE’s entrants in the UK Space Development Competition were part of the mock ‘company’ crowned as national champions in the UK finals held at Imperial College in March.
Vinujan was then selected as one of just 12 young people making up the UK team at the International Space Settlement Design Competition (ISSDC), held at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Florida, where he was elected as his company’s vice president.
Fresh from this experience-of-a-lifetime stateside, Vinujan has now pledged to assist the boys putting themselves forward for places in the QE team due to take part in next month’s London regional heat at the start of this year’s competition.
Head of Physics Jonathan Brooke said: “It’s a testament to the breadth of Vinujan’s talents that he was picked out by the organisers of the UK Space Design Competition to represent the UK.
“Vinujan has shown himself to be a talented communicator who can collaborate effectively with others and who demonstrated the ability to create plausible solutions to challenging engineering problems. I’ve also been very impressed by his willingness to support this year’s competition entrants.”
Mr Brooke also saluted the achievement of Vinujan’s QE teammates who made it through three stages of selection in the 2024–2025 competition to reach the national finals – firstly, they were chosen as part of the School team, before progressing through both regional and national heats.
They had, he said, showcased “the vision, creativity, and resilience needed to tackle some of the biggest challenges humanity will face in the future”.
The NASA-hosted ISSDC is the world’s largest STEM competition of its kind, bringing together hundreds of students from across the globe. Competitors were tasked with producing innovative yet realistic solutions to the immense challenges of human space colonisation, and were challenged to think like professional scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs,
Four international companies, each comprising 60 competitors, were given 48 hours to produce a 50-page proposal for a space settlement that met strict technical criteria set by industry experts.
Vinujan was one of eight team members who presented their company’s 35-minute proposal to a panel of judges. Following his election as vice president (engineering) – the second-most senior role in the company – Vinujan was responsible for focusing on and managing the technical aspects of the settlement design.
He said: “Leading a team of such talented individuals from across the world through the rigorous process of engineering and space design was truly an incredible experience. Although placed as runners-up, our proposal was highly commended by the judges.”
Although entrants compete as individuals, they are placed in national teams. Harik was part of a five-strong UK team, all of whom won medals. Three took bronze, while one was another silver winner, albeit with a lower score and ranking than Harik’s. Medals were awarded to the top 208 competitors.
Harik progressed through three rounds of the UK’s top schools Physics competition and has now been chosen for the five-person UK team after performing well among some 14 high-fliers at a selection camp (pictured).
Harik’s invitation to the UK BPhO training and selection camp in Oxford (pictured) followed on the basis of his performance in Round 1 and 2.
They only started working on the business in August, yet already it has won funding and been accepted into Microsoft’s start-up programme.
“Both Dr Irvine and Dr Ridge seemed quite impressed and were eager to start using Medly as a resource to save time and understand where their students don’t perform well.”
Mr Brooke, who accompanied them to the conference, said: “Every step of the process was driven by the initiative of the boys, and it was fitting that one of the guests on the Scientist Panel that concluded the event, Dr Harshnira Patani, Senior Scientist Pharmacology at MSD (one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies), singled out the boys’ presentation as her highlight of the conference, making particular note of their use of machine learning.”