Heading into his final year of high school, Year 13 Mount Maunganui College student Luca Ririnui never thought he’d be in Kazakhstan and Serbia within days of each other.

The 17-year-old had a mammoth year of academic success, having been awarded dux; represented New Zealand in Kazakhstan at the Biology Olympiad and gaining a bronze medal; travelled to Serbia to compete in the World Schools Debating Championships; and achieved multiple NZQA scholarships.

As his high school journey came to an end, Ririnui said he was most excited for what came next and had been looking ahead for a little while.

“I am probably going to go to the University of Auckland and study for a biomedical science degree, which is plan A, but I’ve also applied to a few overseas universities.”

He has applied to Cambridge University in the UK, Harvard, MIT and Stanford in the United States and is waiting to see how these offers come in heading into the new year.

Ririnui has always been into the sciences and has his sights set on studying neuroscience - and doing the Biology Olympiad in Kazakhstan in July cemented this as a career plan.

“I’ve always been interested in the brain and I think it’s fascinating because it’s how our whole human experience is channelled through this one organ in your head. It’s pretty crazy to think about.

Luca Ririnui has a passion for science and plans to be working in the neuroscience field making a difference in mental health.

“The Biology Olympiad programme, which has kind of been one of my big things this year, has gotten me into biology quite a lot.

“I flew to Kazakhstan for biology and getting to those international events is such a unique atmosphere where people from all over the world are together in one place who are passionate about the same thing. You never get something like that anywhere else.”

After securing a bronze medal in Kazakhstan, Ririnui went to Serbia to compete in the World Schools Debating Championships — another passion of his, where the act of debating and content is what interests him most.

“I left Kazakhstan a day early and flew to Europe to meet up with the debating team, which meant I was going back-to-back.

“But it was nice because we got the chance to explore the local areas and do some touristy things alongside the competitions to learn about the culture and history of the places,” Ririnui said.

Representing New Zealand at the World Schools Debating Championships in Serbia are Jamie Pett (left), Alan Chen, Clara Ballantyne, Luca Ririnui and Bruce Zhang.

“I just wanted to give everything a go and I think I did more this year than I’d ever done in previous years. I just kept saying yes to things and would take them as they came to me.

“I didn’t expect I would even be capable of getting to where I even got to, with making those two teams — that was very far out of my periphery in terms of thinking that was a possibility.

“I wasn’t thinking I would make it to where I did,” he said.

-Bay of Plenty Times

Looking ahead, Ririnui is set on his career and when asked where he sees himself in five years, knows exactly what he hopes to be doing.

“It might take a bit more than five years to get there, but my dream career is working in the neuroscience field and in particular neurotechnology, which is bringing in the engineering side of things.

“I want to do something that would make a difference in the mental health sphere and I think trying to find some of those root causes of like what’s going on in the brain to cause some of these mental illnesses could be a really fulfilling way to do that.

“That’s what I’m most looking forward to.”

-Bay of Plenty Times