The Future Project

PARTNERSHIP AND INNOVATION

The Future Project

Peter Wilson Director - The Future Project

The Future Project (TFP) exposes boys to impactful science and engineering that is focused on research and innovation. This special program typically accepts approximately 50 Senior Interns from Year 11 each year as Research Interns. Participants come from Cherrybrook Technology High School, Loreto Normanhurst, Sydney Girls’ High School, Cumberland High School, Tara Anglican School for Girls and James Ruse High School. There are typically 24 students from outside TKS in the interns program each year.

The TFP fosters partnerships with Australian universities such as UNSW, WSU, and ANU, as well as other external education provider partnerships that add authenticity, depth, and value to the skills and experiences available to students and teachers at King’s. A number of independent research-based companies partner with TFP to enable these opportunities. Currently these include Quantal Bioscience and Hydgene. The TFP also partners with The University of California, Berkeley and the State University of New York at Albany. This team competed in the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition and presented their research in Paris. In 2022, we had five Year 10 classes dedicated to TFP. Students apply for entry into the TFP classes from Year 9 and are enrolled on a case-by-case, but somewhat competitive, basis. The students work on science projects throughout the year and present their results at a prize giving ceremony in November each year, alongside the Year 11 Senior Interns.

In the case of Senior Interns, students are partnered with collaborating researchers from the industry and university partners to gain an insight into conducting the latest biomedical, microbiological, agricultural, or engineering research. Senior Interns work in their own time, spending about 2 hours each week during Terms 1–3 designing, researching, and communicating their research project. They also participate in two, five-day research blocks during the Term 1 and Term 2 holidays to immerse themselves in the experience.

The involvement of the partners with TFP varies and morphs as research interests develop with time and opportunities arise. This ranges from university researchers working with students on research projects, such as Albany advising on Dark Matter research, to students visiting WSU university to use specialised scientific instrumentation, such as using electron microscopes for examination of the silica nodules grown in 2022 to mimic nodules found on Mars.

TFP Research currently underway

UNSW and the Australian Centre for Astrobiology have provided TFP with two sets of experiments to carry out over the coming years. The first involves growing silica nodules, both in the presence of filamentous bacteria and again in sterile conditions. The aim is to show that nodules found on Mars, which seem very much like those found in hot pools on Earth, can only have been made the shape they are by bacteria. The ramifications are obvious. The second experiment to design a robot sampling arm to go to Mars in 2030 in a Japanese expedition to sample those nodules and bring them back to Earth. Both are long term and intensive experiments to be carried out by a succession of TFP boys over the coming years. Another ongoing set of experiments is connected with dark matter, where particle physicists from The University at Albany are overseeing a series of experiments utilising supercooled water as a potential detection mechanism for dark matter. This long-term project may eventually see an experiment designed and built by TFP boys situated in the Stawell mine in Victoria. During 2023, we plan on a group of boys presenting early results of these experiments at a large Chemistry Conference in Osaka in May. Professor Wilson will be chairing a session at this conference. Finally, for 2022, TFP students who are being mentored by WSU are looking at the antioxidant signature of instant coffee and comparing that to pod coffee, with a food fraud perspective. This is made possible by the equipment which WSU has brought onsite, including a supercritical fluid chromatography device