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Year 13 pupil Gabriel Gendler is celebrating after achieving the remarkable feat of being selected as a member of the UK’s International Mathematical Olympiad squad for the third consecutive year.

The squad is drawn from those who have achieved success in the British Mathematical Olympiad and thus brings together an élite group of the country’s finest mathematicians.

“This selection represents a substantial achievement for Gabriel,” said the Headmaster, Neil Enright. “Two years ago Gabriel was the reserve; last year he was selected for the team that competed in Santa Marta, Colombia, and achieved a silver medal – the first QE boy ever to reach the team. His ambition is to achieve a gold, if picked for the team this year, and our best wishes go with him and the rest of the UK squad.”

Gabriel was selected as one of 20 pupils from schools all over the UK to participate in the UK IMO’s training camp at Trinity College in Cambridge last month.  The invitations were based on performances in earlier selection rounds and previous experience in the competition. At the end of the Cambridge training camp he learnt that he had been selected as one of the nine-strong squad for this year’s IMO which will take place in Cape Town, South Africa. He will learn later this month whether he will form part of the six-strong team or be one of the three reserves.

Gabriel has been offered a place at Trinity College, Cambridge, to study Mathematics in the autumn and is looking forward to a career closely linked to the subject.

Contestants in the IMO must answer six problems, each worth seven points. It was first held in Romania in 1959 and has since been held annually, except in 1980. Participants must be under the age of 20 and must not be registered at any higher education institution, so this will be Gabriel’s final opportunity to take part before taking up his university place.

Twelve-year-old Ben Domb represented England at his first international Tae Kwon-Do competition. Ben, of Year 7, was part of the England National Squad who travelled to Minsk in Belarus to compete amongst more than 500 competitors from 25 countries in the European ITF Tae Kwan-Do Championships. 

The United Kingdom Tae Kwon-Do Dojangs organisation picked out Ben in their post-competition report, saying: “We extend our congratulations to Ben. It was his first time competing internationally, and he looks forward to continuing his training with the team in preparation for future European and World Championships.”

Having gained black belt at an unusually young age some years ago, Ben, 1^st Dan, has progressed strongly in the sport. He trains on Sundays with the England squad in Oxford and on Fridays after School with his local Tae Kwon-Do club.

His father, Eytan Domb, said: “I would like to thank the School sports teachers who have been most understanding in allowing Ben on occasion to prioritise this when conflicts have occurred with out-of-hours rugby training in the run-up to this event.”

QE reached the semi-final of a national competition for schools raising money for under-privileged children in Asia and East Africa.

The rewards for the team of six Year 9 boys included an opportunity to meet celebrities such as actor Sir David Jason, who was a member of the judging panel for the semi-final at the House of Lords.

Calling themselves Team Ed-Spread, the six entered the Wings of Hope Achievement Awards (WOHAA) and raised more than £2,000 for Wings of Hope, a charity which provides free education to children through schools projects in India and Malawi. WOHAA is a free social enterprise scheme for schools throughout the UK and is open to pupils from Year 9 – 13. It aims to develop students’ skills whilst encouraging them to raise awareness of its international education projects.

“I was told by the organisers that the competition was fierce and the standard extremely high this year, but Team Ed-Spread’s efforts had shone through,” said Martin Bassett-Jones, Head of Extra-Curricular Enrichment, who organised QE’s entry. “The team had to prepare a five-minute presentation for the judges, which was followed by a three-minute Q&A. The boys did extremely well to rise to all the challenges and raise such a substantial amount of money.”

Udai Arneja, Abhishek Balkrishna, Aravindh Manivannan, Yashwanth Matta, Mark Thomas and Abhinav Vudathu took part in the semi-final after being short-listed. The panel of judges included Sir David (famous for roles including Del Boy in Only Fools and Horses and as the eponymous star of Inspector Frost), Sean Biggerstaff (who played Oliver Wood in the Harry Potter films) and Sophie Kinsella (author of Confessions of a Shopaholic).

The team spent six months fund-raising, organising activities that included a sponsored run and swim, an archery shoot, a talk in Pinner Library, the sale of wristbands and promotional activity on social media.

The prizes were presented at a separate event at the Royal College of Surgeons at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. During the ceremony, Abhinav performed a dance to entertain the audience and judges, who included the High Commissioner for Malawi, Bernard Sande.

The competition attracted entries from schools such as Merchant Taylors’, Henrietta Barnett and North London Collegiate.

For the second consecutive year, QE will furnish one of the five members of the team representing Great Britain in the International Physics Olympiad (IPO).

Aniruddh Ragu (pictured left) will not only go to this summer’s IPO, but won a prize as the top-performing student in the selection process and also gained the British Physics Olympiad Theoretical Prize, sponsored by the National Physical Laboratory.

He will travel to Astana in Kazakhstan to compete in the IPO between 13^th and 21^st July, following in the footsteps of another QE boy, Madhi Elango, who last year achieved a bronze medal as the GB team came third in Copenhagen.

“Both boys made it to the final 15 who took part in this year’s selection week for the international squad at Oxford University,” said Physics teacher Ashley Dyson. “QE was the only school to have more than one finalist, so both Madhi and Aniruddh are to be congratulated on their achievements. They have been very impressive in their ability to dissect the problems they have been asked to solve and their diligence has been well rewarded.”

The competition posed a daunting challenge, with much of the physics substantially more complex than that encountered at A-level. Topics have included the vis-viva equation for elliptical orbits of objects in the solar system and the equations of relativity and time dilation.

For winning the British Physics Olympiad Theoretical prize, Aniruddh was presented at the Royal Society with a TI-Nspire graphical calculator given by Texas Instruments. He was presented with his award for his outstanding performance as a finalist by Murat Rustemov, Second Secretary at the Kazakhstan Embassy.

The School is also celebrating after it won the A2 Texas instruments science prize of a similar calculator with classroom data-logging equipment. Students will now receive specialist training in how to use this later this term. This was also presented at the Royal Society, where the ceremony was attended by Texas Instruments’ Marketing Manager, Mark de Heip.

Year 10 boy Yuta Tsuchiya has been awarded a silver medal and a distinction certificate after finishing in the top 100 in the élite Intermediate Mathematical Olympiad. 

Aneesh Chopada, of Year 9, and Nitharsan Sathiyalingam, of Year 10, were also awarded distinction certificates, with a further six boys achieving merit certificates and two others participation certificates.

The Olympiad is an invitation event run by the UK Mathematics Trust, which selects the top students who competed in the UK Intermediate Maths Challenge, a competition open to Years 9, 10 and 11. Nearly 1,700 students took part this year.

“Even to reach the Olympiad is a significant achievement,” said Assistant Head of Mathematics Wendy Fung. “Solving any one of the problems set is an impressive feat and any boys who did more than that deserve corresponding praise.”

In addition to the School's involvement in the Olympiad, 71 QE boys took part in the Kangaroo, which is a follow-on round from the Intermediate Challenge for those not awarded places in the Olympiad. The top 25% in each paper receive a certificate of merit. Among the QE contingent, Year 9 boys Souhardh Kotakadi, Nikhil Shah and Sahil Shah, together with Year 11 boys Hayato Murata, Jake Breindel, Svaraaj Harbhajanka and Daniil Slavin were awarded merit certificates. The remaining 64 boys received participation certificates.

“My congratulations go to all these qualifiers,” said Miss Fung.

A third of this year’s British team competing in an international space design contest will comprise QE students, after four Year 11 boys were chosen to be part of the 12-strong team.

David Dubinsky, Eugene Lin, Andrew Von Maydell and Daniil Slavin will travel to the Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral in the USA in July to take part in the final. The four won the West London regional competition, thus qualifying for the national competition, which took place at Imperial College, London. More than 200 students competed in the national final.

“It is a real accomplishment that four QE boys have been selected for the British team,” said headmaster Neil Enright. “They have done exceptionally well and I wish them all success in the international competition in America, which represents a tremendous opportunity for them.”

The annual competition is organised and funded by the Imperial College’s Space Science and Engineering Foundation, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the UK Space Agency.  The students were divided into four teams of 40-50 students; each team had to select a president, two vice-presidents, and heads of department. Andrew Von Maydell was elected president of one team and Daniil Slavin was elected head of operations.

The teams were required to perform as if they were a professional company, and furnish a proposal to design and build a settlement on an asteroid. The proposal had to cover structural design, operations and infrastructure, automation design, as well as human factors such as services, living arrangements, entertainment and food production for the inhabitants. Their proposal had to be researched and costed, then submitted to a panel of judges.

Nine students were selected for the British team by the 40-50 members of the UK winning team in a secret ballot. The remaining three were chosen by the CEOs and technical advisors who were at the UK final.

The International Space Settlement Design Competition, commonly known as Spaceset or I-SSDC, will take place at the end of July and features teams from India, the USA, Canada, Australia, Pakistan, Argentina and Romania. During the four-day event, the organisers hope to create an authentic experience of working as part of an aerospace company's proposal team.

The students will have to design a city in space that will house over 10,000 people, demonstrating creativity, technical competence, management skills, space environment knowledge, teamwork, and presentation techniques. The teams will work alongside professional engineers who will share both their knowledge and experience in engineering and management. In addition to presenting their ideas to a panel of judges, they will have to create a 40-page report which communicates their ideas and designs.