Active and talented high school students from various fields came to share their experience at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Brno University of Technology. As speakers, they accepted an invitation to the Junior Conference, the pilot year of which took place on Friday, May 16, and was organized by university students for their younger colleagues.

You could easily mistake Tereza Jelínková's biography for the CV of any young scientist. It is overflowing with internships, specialized training and courses. Yet Tereza is "just" a high school student. She shared her presentation "How I started with science in my first year" at the Junior Conference at FME.

"We managed to attract eleven speakers from the ranks of secondary school students from seven schools and with a total of eight topics. Each ten-minute presentation was followed by a space for questions and discussion. An essential part of the event was networking and getting to know the student teams that operate at FME or BUT, respectively," said Jan Kalina, a doctoral student of FME on behalf of the organizers of the event. The aim of the event was to support students' motivation to work on interesting projects and challenges, to expand their contacts and thus opportunities, and also to promote interest in so-called STEM fields, i.e. science, technology and mathematics.

And how did the aforementioned Tereza Jelínková get into science? In her own words, through popularization events such as Researchers' Night, Week of Science and Technology and others. It was there that she became so enthusiastic about science that she decided to become a scientist. Therefore, in her first year of high school, she applied for the Academy of Sciences' Open Science program and received a one-year internship at a professional workplace. She was able to taste what you could call ordinary scientific life: research, studying English professional texts, data processing and speaking at a conference. Later, she also took part in a simulated flight to Mars as part of the Mars Expedition project.

English in particular was a big challenge for her, but she took it as a universal language of science that she simply couldn't do without. And also, as a door to the world. "I took it piece by piece – I started with popularization videos in English and I took up extra language lessons," she said, describing how she gradually got to the point where she was able to study professional English articles in her field, which is biochemistry.

Contrary to Tereza, Zdeno Sekerák was more enthusiastic about engineering than living nature. Otherwise, however, his story is similar to Tereza's in many ways: motivation, desire to do something more, but also strong-mindedness. Already in high school, he and his two friends embarked on the Secondary School Professional Activity (SOČ), when they built a 3D printed plane with a pulsating engine. Zdeno was in charge of design, construction and 3D printing.

In addition, he worked in the European Youth Parliament, has an internship in a startup that develops VTOL aircraft (VTOL abbreviation for Vertical Take-Off and Landing, which refers to aircraft that can take off and land vertically).) and this year, as a high school graduate, is applying to several foreign and domestic universities, including FEM. "Hopefully it could work out in Denmark. I also got into a university in Britain, but unfortunately, I don't have enough money to study there," he says. He also came to share his experience with other active high school students at the Junior Conference. And what is behind his success? Is it luck? "From the outside, it may look like luck, but I think it's more about having initiative," concludes Zdeno Sekerák.