Hello everyone, welcome to UFV’s 2024 LIYSF blog series written by yours truly, Connor Goodvin! Though I arrived in London yesterday, the opening ceremony events started today at 11:00 BST or 3 am in BC.
This opening ceremony, in which I had the honour to bear Canada’s flag, was in no way the beginning of my day. I found myself lying in bed unable to sleep at 3:00 BST. After puttering around for an hour I decided to go on a morning walk filled with oddities such as a fox scurrying across the cobblestone streets, to a motorcyclist attempting to commute whilst reading a paper map.
Meeting up with my fellow flag bearers at 7:30 we quickly ate and began rehearsing. Though tensions were high amongst us 82 representatives, the ceremony went well and I was able to meet students from across the globe.
Our opening speaker, Sir Gregory Winter, was the first of many world-renowned scientists I will have the pleasure of hearing from. Sharing his journey leading up to his work on humanising antibodies from mice, paving the way for the development of new drugs such as Keytruda, Sir Winter’s tale was full of advice for anyone pursuing scientific research.
Following a break for lunch and to stretch our legs we returned for our second talk of the day from Professor Kelly Chibale in which he discussed the importance of developing drugs near the patient demographic to closely monitor their effect on a given population and improve its efficacy.
To end off the first day students were broken up into teams of ~10 and competed in a science-themed trivia night in which my team got smoked by the competition. As we returned to our dorms I was ready to get to bed and hoped that I could get a fuller night’s rest.
– Connor