An Unexpected Journey: Science Competition Leads Budding Actor to Space Design

Luke Roeven’s academic and career paths have never been linear. What began as a youthful ambition to tread the boards took an unexpected turn.

Somewhere between high school science and maths competitions, the budding actor fell in love with physics, and how it intersects with engineering.

Luke now works as an Avionics Designer at Reaction Dynamics, a rocket manufacturing company in Montreal, Canada, after completing a degree in mechatronic engineering (with 1st Class Honours), at the University of Canterbury.

“I studied engineering to understand how the world works,” says Luke, who was a member of the New Zealand team at the 2018 International Young Physicists’ Tournament (IYPT) in China.

“The nuance is that physicists and engineers understand different parts of the world. Frankly, most degrees are about how the world works, whether it’s social sciences or chemistry. It was only once I started that I discovered how much fun making things is.”

He now says few things affected his life more than IYPT, as well as other competitions he joined in high school such as the IYPT precursor New Zealand Young Physicists’ Tournament (NZYPT).

The spotlight shifts

Back in Wellington High School, Luke was drawn to the stage. “I’d acted in a few things as a kid, and chose my school primarily because it was THE drama school at the time. I was a pretty poor academic performer likely due to my dyslexia, so something like engineering or physics was absolutely not my plan.”

“Why IYPT affected me, or whether it really had an impact beyond just growing up, is hard to tell,” he says, drawing a parallel to the classic problem of “correlation versus causation”.

“I can postulate that the one-on-one mentorship and hands-on approach to science coupled with a presentation component which played into my acting skills may have provided me with some of my first experiences at excelling at something,” says Luke.

Despite his experience in acting, he felt that his first presentation at a young physicists tournament in Wellington did not go well. “I presented on the mathematics of falling dominoes. One of my physics teachers at the time, Murray Chisholm, gave me a 4/10.”

An upside was he enjoyed preparing for the competition. “I felt like I’d been secretly let into the smart kids area and got to sink a lot of time into this one interesting problem with as much support as I could possibly want. It came at just the right time when my reading and writing were catching up to meet my maths skills.”

Another memorable experience was at the national competitions for the IYPT tryouts. He was against Finnegan Messerli, whom he had known since year 9 or 10. “Instead of being a competition, that whole ‘physics fight’ was just the two of us nerding out about this very niche problem, similar to when you find the first person who shares your same hobbies and is equally passionate.”

At another competition, Luke singles out a “weird” problem called “Paper Wrinkles” that further introduced him to engineering. “I needed to find a way to measure what a wrinkle was, and in that process had to develop tooling and go through a rudimentary design cycle.”

Asked what physics concept he would like to teach, Luke initially cites first principles thinking, then adds: “It’s a very common concept and boring, so I’ve decided to talk about something more fun instead: control systems, which can be surprisingly applicable outside of engineering/physics, and it’s very fun to teach!”

“An easy way to think about control would be the act of balancing an upright pen on your finger. Your sight of the pen and its pressure on your finger would be a sensor, and you moving your finger would be an actuator. Together, you’re employing a kind of control system to keep the pen in the air. I’d have to think very hard for a physics concept which is also applicable as general advice for someone. Physics is physics and humans aren’t numbers.”

Luke has always been involved in a range of personal projects. Soon after his first year of university, he started making a computer completely from scratch. He was a volunteer tutor at Te Aro School in Wellington, helping young students with learning disabilities foster their passion for academics. He was a mentor at Launch Canada, helping students build and design a turbo-pump with the eventual goal of a liquid rocket engine.

For those thinking into building a career in STEM, Luke says, “Do IYPT, that would 100 per cent be my recommendation.”

“I remember finding almost all of the mechanics and dynamics courses easy at university in no small part due to already learning the content for IYPT in a focused and supportive environment,” he states.

“The intuition you gain from working on these problems is really nothing like university courses. I think the key for me was studying to learn, not studying to pass a course. It may seem the same externally, but the content I haven’t forgotten was the stuff I wanted to learn, not the stuff I wanted to pass, even if my grades were the same.”

He didn’t just sharpen his technical skills at the competition. “The presentation aspect taught me a lot about effective communication. Creating the presentations and equally learning to dissect and identify errors in others were valuable skills. You could tell if someone had done a similar competition by the way they wrote reports and presentations.”

As told to, and written by, Divina Paredes