Blake Gower
A word among friends and a leg-up from Rotary might have propelled Blake Gower’s dreams of a future in aerospace engineering into the stratosphere.
Immediate past president of Te Awamutu Rotary club, Kylie Brewer, with the Te Awamutu College student the club sponsored, Blake Gower. Photo: Viv Posselt
The Te Awamutu College Year 13 student flies to London next week to attend the London International Youth Science Forum (LIYSF) at Imperial College. That opportunity, which came out of his participation in January’s Rotary National Science and Technology Forum 2025 in Auckland, will present him with access to some of the best scientific brains in the world and to an array of future study possibilities.
“I am very, very excited,” he told The News last week. “I can say without exaggerating that the fortnight I spent at the Auckland Forum were the best two weeks of my life… there is something about being with over 160 like-minded people that is incredible. But this London thing… that was a big shock. Totally unexpected but a fantastic opportunity.”
Blake Gower
If 160 had Blake fizzing, London will knock his socks off; expectations are for a longer forum with 500 attendees from 80 different countries.
While there, he will visit an Airbus factory, both Oxford and Cambridge universities, go to lectures given by Nobel-prizewinning scientists, and get stuck into debates and general knowledge competitions. Those bringing projects with them – Blake isn’t one of them – will be able to present them at a Science Bazaar and outside the formal stuff will be time for exploration.
“We will have few free hours on a couple of days,” Blake said. He has already secured a ticket for MJ The Musical in the West End, and while he is not a total stranger to London (he has family living nearby) the city’s museums are on his radar. A tour of London is included, plus a visit to some of the normally closed-off sections of Buckingham Palace, with the Princess Royal Princess Anne in attendance.
He comes home on August 9, and is already booked for an early September ‘report-back’ to the Te Awamutu Rotary club. While Rotary has nothing to do with the London’s Youth Science Forum itself, it is Blake’s inclusion at the Rotary Auckland event that has enabled it all to happen.
Blake was the only Te Awamutu student sponsored by Te Awamutu Rotary for the 2025 Auckland Forum. How he got there was through a conversation between his farmer dad Lance Gower, and someone known to the immediate past president of Te Awamutu Rotary, Kylie Brewer. With her own scientific bent embedded in agriculture, she mentioned that Blake might find the Auckland Forum a good opportunity to explore his science interests.
It was that and much more. He got stuck into debating and general knowledge competitions and volleyball, as well as an Innovation Design Challenge (think Shark Tank). London popped up as one of those opportunities, and his parents Lance and Melissa Gower gave him the green light to apply.
The Korakonui-based student turned 17 in January, and has long been interested in science.
He is a deputy house captain at school, a debating captain, chairman of the SADD (Students against Dangerous Driving) committee, and wears numerous badges, some of them noting his exceptional academic performance.
He said the Rotary Forum had helped him settle on his preferred area of engineering and hopes to start his studies at Canterbury University. After that, who knows, but London might just re-set his radar completely.
Blake Gower, 17, wings his way to Imperial College London next week to take part in the London International Youth Science Forum. Photo: Viv Posselt
