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Four QE teams are gearing up for the challenge of the world finals of a robotics competition at the end of April, following their successful qualification.

Two senior teams, Hybrid Alpha and Beta, won places in the VEX EDR Robotics World Championships in the USA at the School’s very first attempt. And at the VEX IQ junior level, a further two teams, Gear Squad and Technogear, are also heading for the finals in Louisville, Kentucky, having matched the feat of the double qualification by QE teams in 2017, the first year the School had entered the junior competition.

The boys’ efforts have been boosted by the support of the Foundation Trustees and of one particular OE, Sachin Dev Duggal (1994–2001), who is an AI entrepreneur.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “Having no fewer than four teams in the world finals of this extremely popular competition represents an achievement of the very highest order. I know that the boys will be enjoying their Easter holidays in eager anticipation of their trip to the States, where we all wish them even greater success.”

Hybrid Alpha qualified after taking the Excellence Award in the regional EDR event at Stowe School during the winter. Then, at the national finals held at Telford International Centre, the other senior team, Beta, picked up the highly sought-after Design Award for the design process itself and their excellent logging and tracking of it, which secured them a berth at the World Championship.

Mr Noonan commended Alpha’s “extremely accomplished performance”, adding: “Beta proved they have what it takes when the chips are really down on a national stage. Both teams have done superbly in their senior competition debut.”

Gear Squad qualified at the IQ national finals, also at Telford, by retaining the Teamwork Champions title won by QE last year, whilst Technogear won the Design Award in the junior category. “In the biggest national finals yet, the boys held their nerve and performed valiantly,” Mr Noonan said.

The Alpha team is made up of: Year 12’s Aadi Desai, together with Deshraam Ganeshamoorthy, Bhargab Ghoshal, James Tan and Ukendar Vadivel, all of Year 10. The Beta team comprises: Dilan Sheth, of Year 12, along with Daniel Radzik-Rahman, Yai Sagolsem, Devin Karia and Sunay Challa, from Year 10. Gear Squad consists of Year 9 boys Vihaan Jain, Varun Vijay Kumar, Shilacshan Lingakumar, Dillan Shah and Alex Woodcock. Technogear comprises five Year 8 boys: Arjun Arunkumar, Dylan Domb, Aditya Khanna, Anish Rana and Yash Shah.

Boys enjoyed an opportunity to hear about careers in less traditional sectors when two Old Elizabethans visited the School.

Max Hassell and Aaron Levitt (both 2002–2009) are a football agent and music entrepreneur respectively. Both spoke of the challenges and rewards of choosing the road less travelled.

Max was a keen sportsman at QE, representing the School in the First XV at rugby, as well as playing for the county at U16 and U18 levels. After reading History at Bristol, he turned his back on an opportunity at Big Four accountancy firm Deloitte – where he had completed a successful gap year – in order to pursue his dream.

“My parents were in favour of my pursuing a career in The City,” said Max. “But you have to do what you love. Football and sport are my passion; I get up every day and feel excited about what the day will bring.”

Max completed a three-month unpaid internship as a football consultant, before being offered a full-time role as an FA Registered Intermediary with Sidekick Management Ltd. “It was very hard to break into,” said Max. “I had no contacts and little industry experience. In the beginning, I was constantly being asked which footballers I already had on the books, which was tough when I didn’t know any personally.” But he successfully signed two players to the agency within his first three months and, in doing so, forged sustainable relationships with a number of academy directors, coaches and a chief executive.

At Sidekick he finds the company “perfectly positioned” to provide excellent advice on career management. “We have been involved in many multi-million-pound transfer deals and contract negotiations with the biggest clubs in world football and international players of high repute.”

He stressed that it isn’t all glamour. “You get the days when you travel to Accrington Stanley to try to talk to a player who doesn’t want to talk to you!” He also pointed out that the very high amounts of money flooding into the top tier of football becomes a trickle down in the lower divisions.

Aaron Levitt has pursued a career in the creative industries, setting up Stamp the Wax (an online music platform) as well as having worked in radio. Increasingly, he is bringing together brands to work with the music scene.

“I am an experienced music curator and influencer across all levels of the industry, including radio, festivals, labels and online publishing. As co-founder of www.stampthewax.com, I have grown the online music platform to become one of the key UK influencers in underground music. As an original member of [disc jockey and record label owner] Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide FM, I played a key role in the development of an award-winning online radio station.”

Aaron also spoke of the importance of bringing value to organisations, in his case through effective marketing and communications strategies. “My productive relationships with brands, PR companies, booking agents, labels, DJs and musicians have been significant in this.”

Both Aaron and Max agreed that hard work is key, whether at School or at work. “Trust QE’s processes,” Aaron told the boys. “The School will really set you up well for university and life beyond.”

Max said: “Don’t be afraid to go your own way. Pursue what you love, what you are interested in. Friends in more ‘traditional’ roles in the City might earn considerably more at this point in their careers, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they are happy in what they are doing.”

“‘You don’t have to have everything planned out,” advised Aaron. “I don’t necessarily know what the next six months hold. What is important is that I am able to adapt to changes in the industry. In music, a growth area is the way in which music is coming together with brands to deliver very creative and curated campaigns, and this is something I am getting more and more into from a freelance perspective.”

The talk was open to boys from all age groups and was organised by Mike Feven, Head of Year 12. “This was a good opportunity for boys to hear about some less conventional career paths, in areas in which many young people hold strong interest,” he said. “We appreciate Max and Aaron giving up their time to talk to the boys. They posed the interesting conundrum as to whether you should try to make your passion your work or pursue a different career and keep your passion as a hobby. That can be difficult to weigh up, but clearly Max and Aaron are both making it work for them.”

They added to the considerable number of Old Elizabethans who have been back to the school to give talks this year. They said they enjoyed catching up with the Headmaster, Neil Enright, and long-standing teachers, including Assistant Head David Ryan and Head of Art Stephen Buckeridge.

Sixth Form mathematicians saw a genuine Enigma machine at work at Maths Fest 2018, where the wartime device was the star of the show.

Thirty-eight Year 12 mathematicians attended the event at the Piccadilly Theatre in the West End and saw the demonstration of encoding and decoding. Another memorable moment came when one of the speakers burst into song!
Now in its third year, Maths Fest 2018 was set up by long-established Mathematics speakers, Matt Parker and Rob Eastaway, who “thought it was time there was a Maths festival for schools run entirely by passionate mathematicians”.

The first speaker, James Grimes, who is part of the Millennium Mathematics Project at the University of Cambridge, spoke about codes and ciphers and about the importance of cracking codes throughout history, from Julius Caesar to internet security, with the Enigma machine providing an exciting climax to his presentation.

Aoife Hunt, an industrial modelling expert, demonstrated how she uses statistics and crowd-flow models to make sure large venues are safe. She showed how three particular graphs (reciprocal, quadratic and ‘normal’) are vital in her work.

Ben Sparks from the Further Maths Support Programme at the University of Bath gave an insight into spirals and circular motion inspired by the 1968 Michel Legrand song Windmills of Your Mind.

Round, like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning
On an ever-spinning reel

Mathematics teacher Phil Brady, who accompanied the boys to the event said: “He ended his session by singing for us – a real treat. The festival, which was hosted by Matt Parker in his usual witty manner, was both impressive and great fun.”

The event also featured Maths Slam, an opportunity for some of the students to go on to the stage to talk for three minutes about an interesting aspect of maths. QE boys Binu Perera and Uday Kataria gave a presentation on ‘How to hold a pizza’.

“Apart from the various talks scheduled for the day, Maths fest was a fantastic opportunity for us to speak about an interesting mathematical idea in front of over a thousand Year 12 students,” said Binu. “We decided to talk about Gauss’s theorema egregium because, whilst being fun to both present and research, it is an understated, yet simple, mathematical concept that is fundamental to our everyday lives,” added Uday.

Seb Lee-Delisle, a creative coder who works on large-scale installations, described how to transform a simple animated point into an impressive multicoloured firework display and showed how this was the basis of his professional laser displays.

The show was closed by Hannah Fry, a senior lecturer in the Mathematics of Cities at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at UCL. She demonstrated how to generate random (and not-so-random) numbers to produce a four-digit winning lottery number. Mr Brady’s ticket was just four away from being a winner!