Julia Bejleri

QLD

Perseverance and scientific creativity are vital for a good investigation or design, as you will come across MANY challenges! Be open to trying many initial designs and having them fail, as these are often the stepping-stones that will lead you to the answer you are looking for.

The best way to find a question is to start in your community; ask friends, family, teachers about issues they would like to see solved by science. This is an incentive to extend your research to help solve community issues and could even lead to solving global issues.

Solving problems faced by people and communities, both on a practical and global level, is what motivated 2019 finalist Julia Bejleri. For her Awards project she set out to investigate ways to counteract the bacteria Helicobacter pylori that causes stomach inflammation, after discovering her uncle had been impacted by a related disease for many years. Julia discovered certain medications were effective in inhibiting urease (an enzyme on the surface of the bacteria), which resulted in the bacteria being unable to survive in the human stomach.

It took a lot of hard work and trial and error for Julia to develop her experimental process, to ensure she was getting reliable results. Julia advises aspiring students that taking time to work through the process is crucial:

I’d say perseverance and scientific creativity are vital for a good investigation or design, as you will come across MANY challenges! Be open to trying many initial designs and having them fail, as these are often the stepping-stones that will lead you to the answer you are looking for

As a finalist, Julia presented her work to a panel of judges, as well as industry leaders and STEM professionals in a conference style poster session. It is these experiences and the development of her presentation skills, which she values the most from her time at the Awards camp in Melbourne.

Although initially, I thought it would be very nerve-wracking to speak in front of judges and industry professionals, I think that I gained lots of confidence in my own knowledge and abilities by having those opportunities to step out of my comfort zone. Being put in that situation helps you realise that when you know a project or topic back to front, you can pitch it to anyone with great confidence!

Being an Awards finalist has inspired Julia to pursue a career in Intellectual Property and commercialisation of scientific projects. Julia is currently working towards her goal by studying a double degree at The University of Queensland. In her spare time, she enjoys going to the beach, seeing friends and playing volleyball.

[Being a finalist] helped me understand how important it is to help preserve and protect the amazing scientific/engineering ideas created for the good of our community and the world. That is why I am currently studying law and economics, to gain the skills to help commercialise and globalise projects (I’m most interested in scientific projects) and bring their solutions to people all around the world. I will always have a love for science and am hoping to specialise in biosciences enterprise in the future!

Learn more about Julia’s project here.