WALDO SAVILLE OFF TO THE EUROPEAN SCIENCE FAIR IN STOCKHOLM
Waldo Saville (S6RPC) has recently won a major prize in the British Association Crest Award Competition. Over 6000 students took part from all over the UK and Waldo won through to the final competition hosted by the Royal Society. Here he had to make presentations to a team of scientists on his original research into the analysis of the water soluble constituents present in the herbal product Guacatonga. (Guacatonga is obtained from the plant Casearia Sylvestris found in South America: it has analgesic, antifungal, anti-inflammatory and antiviral properties).
He impressed the panel and was awarded an all expenses paid one week visit to Stockholm in September where he will represent the UK in an European Union contest for young Scientists.
Waldo’s passion for Chemistry is unbounded. He was awarded a Nuffield Bursary for 4 weeks during the J6/S6 summer holidays, to work with a company called MNL pharma Ltd in Aberystwyth. He studied small molecule therapeutics which support the immune system in combating chronic diseases. For his work here he was awarded a Nuffield Gold Award and then after giving more presentations at Imperial Collage he was awarded an EXSCITEC Platinum Award. (For this award you must have been involved with a research project for at least 120 hours). He then went on to his latest success in the British Association Crest Award competition.
Always looking for the next challenge, Waldo has recently been awarded a four week scholarship at the Dr Bessie Lawrence International Summer Science Institute at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, where he will be furthering his knowledge of organic chemistry in a research environment. When he returns from Israel, he will take up his place to read Chemistry at Oxford.
Waldo says of his studies that ‘having worked in such a focused research environment on a subject that I am passionate about, I find my interest in scientific discovery growing all the time. It was exciting to follow the logical and precise steps needed to isolate a chemical compound out of thousands and then to establish its tentative structure using powerful instrumental techniques like NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance)’.