Podcasts!

We just wrapped up the 2025 Youth Innovation Showcase, a virtual STEM competition for youth in BC and the Yukon who have used science to solve a challenge in their life or community. This is heart of innovation, and we give these youth a platform to delve deeper into these ideas, but to showcase them to the public. 

And in this episode of Let’s Innovate we’re going to hear from the winners from the two age categories. In the 12-15 category it was a Nara Harvey, and in the 16-19 category it was Sameer Assanie and Bobby Yang. If you want to get full context, watch each of their pitch project videos linked below.

Nara Harvey – AI-Driven Sailboat to Combat Marine Poaching

Sameer Assanie and Bobby Yang – Airlume

Finalists Age 12-15 Recap

Finalists Age 16-19 Recap

All finalists and semi-finalists

Stephan Leafriver is a nêhiyaw (Cree) Métis-Scottish, 2-Spirit artist, Land Steward, and filmmaker working at the intersections of story, sound, and stewardship. Living and creating on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, Stephan’s practice bridges Indigenous sovereignty and governance, climate adaptation, and community economies. They were the 2025 valedictorian of Native Education College’s Indigenous Land Stewardship program and have advanced into the University of British Columbia’s Bachelor of Indigenous Land Stewardship (BILS) pathway, with applied research spanning marine conservation in the North Pacific, Haida Gwaii climate planning, and Guardians program design.

As phenstrom, Stephan composes immersive, land-attuned music and facilitates performance spaces that invite calm focus and relational accountability. Current projects include an Indigenous lead Land Trust models (supported by their ancestral nation, the Ahtahkakoop Cree Nation; Treaty 6), podcast(s) and public-facing conversations on healing-centered practices, and film work that frames reciprocity, justice and environmental care through lived story. Whether on stage, in the field, or in the classroom, Stephan works to make policy tangible, data humane, and future development collaborative, centering kinship with the lands and water.

Pranav Menon is the adjunct professor at UBC in Applied Science and Engineering. He is also Program Director at The Knowledge Society (TKS), a 10-month global innovation program for ambitious high school students ages 13-17 which they advertise as the world’s top global accelerator for teens.

Pranav says in his bio that he trains nerds to solve big problems, so that sounds like the perfect guest for this episode of Let’s Innovate with Pranav Menon. 

You can find recent workshops that he’s done for us here: YIS 2025 Workshop Series – Science Fairs Foundation British Columbia. 

And if you want to learn more about TKS their programming go to TKS | The World’s Top Innovation Program for Youth.

Dr. Will Primrose is the Program Manager for Future Science Leaders at Science World in Vancouver, British Columbia. The Future Science Leaders (FSL) program at Science World is a 26-week after-school program for secondary school students that provides hands-on experience and mentorship in STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art & design, and math) fields.

He obtained his Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from Thompson Rivers University, where he was also the Director of the EUReKA! Science Program. Under the supervision of Professor Zac Hudson, Will then spent the last five years studying luminescent molecules and nanoparticles at The University of British Columbia where he obtained his Ph.D. in chemistry in August of this year. 

Dr. Gerry Poulton is a retired Chemistry professor from the University of Victoria, whose decades of mentorship and leadership have helped shape science fairs in th the Greater Victoria Regional Science Fair. From guiding countless students to national and international competitions, to championing the transformative power of inquiry-based learning, Dr. Poulton’s contributions have left a lasting mark on the science fair community, so much so that he’s being awarded a legacy award this year. 

Gerry has made such difference in this province for education, science fair, and science in general. He’s such an inspiration, and shows for me, just how science fairs which even in my life, is something that you could say is off the side of my desk from my main job, but is so richly rewarding. If you want to make a difference for some of these amazing youth head on over to our website sciencefair.ca/mentorship, you can sign up to be one, and participate in our monthly open office hours meeting called Science Club. It’s an online meetup where youth, parents, and teachers come to ask questions and be inspired.

Here at the Science Fair Foundation we mostly are focussed and supporting a variety of initiatives around science fairs, which is not surprising. You have school fairs, local fairs, regional fairs, and the youth innovation showcase. All amazing opportunities for youth to delve into their curiosity and express themselves with their ideas, and projects. Over the past couple of years i’ve gotten to know someone, that did get involved with all of those initiatives, but took it one step further. He wrote, and published not one, but two books about the universe. Cosmic Wonder: Our Place in the Epic Story of the Universe The Language of the Stars: The Scientific Story of a Few Billion Years in a Few Hundred Pages