STEM stars shine in NESCol skills challenge

May 24, 2024

The winners have been crowned in North East Scotland College’s annual STEM skills competition for S2 pupils sponsored by Shell UK.

The popular event brings teams together from schools across the region to take part in eight STEM challenges in the final round.

The Aberdeenshire finals took place at the College’s Fraserburgh Campus. Mintlaw Academy duo Emily Cobban and Nathan Olesen claimed first place, with Meldrum Academy pair Lucas McCluskie and Amelie Lot clinching the runner-up spot.

In Aberdeen, where teams went head to head at the College’s Altens Campus, there was a win for Cults Academy team Misha Anthwal and Daniel Davison. Second spot went to Hazlehead Academy’s Meredith Reid and Matthew Murphy.

More than 2,500 pupils took part in the initial stage of the competition, with several hundred making the second round before two pupils from each school were selected for the finals.

Duncan Abernethy, NESCol’s Director of Business Development, said: “Working with Shell UK, NESCol has engaged with around 2,500 S2 pupils across City and Shire this year to deliver an exciting STEM Challenge which helps to highlight the opportunities that are available for young people around energy transition. Events this year have involved some of the latest technologies with robotics, virtual reality and simulation as well as more traditional engineering tasks like building pulley systems. We hope that the competition inspires young people to consider pathways that they might not have thought of previously.

The competition has really shown the talent across our region amongst school pupils who are going to provide the engineering solutions in the future, to some of our greatest challenges. It has been fantastic to see the enthusiasm and creativity while problem solving, as well as great teamwork between the participants”.