Meena Sritharan
As an individual pursuing a STEM-based career, the awards shaped my decisions to study science and pursue it as a career path. Receiving the award made me realise that I enjoyed designing and undertaking experiments and confirmed my desire to undertake a science degree at university. Explore and research ideas that spark your interest and make you daydream (even when you shouldn't be). Great projects are driven by great passion and will take you further than you'll ever believe. The best ideas can come from the smallest of moments such as simply recognising a problem and seeking to solve it. So follow your random trains of thoughts as you'll never know where they could take you.
Meena looked at the effect that water temperature has on the clean-up of oil spills, to become a finalist in the 2011 BHP Billiton Foundation Science and Engineering Awards.
After completing year 12, she undertook a degree in Advanced Science (Honours), majoring in ecology and microbiology. Her final year honours project, investigating native alpine plants, earned her first-class honours. Meena has begun a PhD at the Australian National University, looking at threatened plants and conservation ecology.
Being a BHP Billiton Foundation Science and Engineering Awards finalist has had a profound effect on Mena’s life and she is keen to inspire students to do their own inquiry project and ultimately enter the BHP Billiton Foundation Science and Engineering Awards.
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