Victoria develops top secondary school biology students

Over the school holidays, the School of Biological Sciences hosted the top 19 biology students in the country as they competed to represent New Zealand at the International Biology Olympiad in Busan, Korea this July.

The students honed their skills and their technical knowledge in the School of Biological Sciences. Besides a jam-packed lab programme including state of the art molecular techniques, dissections and microscopy, they visited Zealandia, the Wellington Zoo and were taken back of house at Te Papa. They also tasted some of the many social activities Wellington has to offer.

Geoffrey Hoggins, a Kings’ College student, Susan Sun of Christchurch’s Burnside College, Yuanye Xu of Westlake Boys’ High School in Auckland and Jack Zhou of the Auckland International College were selected to represent New Zealand at the 2010 event.

The New Zealand International Biology Olympiad is one of seven science programmes that recently formed a national association, Science OlympiaNZ. The Science OlympiaNZ programmes are both aspirational and inspirational. They foster academic excellence in science and support our most talented students to see science as a valued career.