Science Rendezvous — the annual event that brings together the Kingston community with local S.T.E.M (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) experts and researchers — will be taking over the Leon’s Centre on May 13. .

One of the keay features of this year’s event is Bayridge Secondary School student Elijah's presentation, where he will be presenting his virtual reality work. Elijah dove into the world of coding on Minecraft in middle school, and then started experimenting with BeatSaber, an online game of over 1.5 million active players, in which players use objects similar to a lightsaber to slash 3-D cubes that come at them, to the beat of a song. The local student created all the effects, visuals, and graphics for his map, which is to the song “Somewhere Out There” by acloudyskye. His map is the most played map of all time on BeatSaber, and won map of the year in 2021. 

Science Rendezvous’ theme this year is “CREATE” in which participants will show how discoveries are made and new knowledge is constructed by scientists in labs, forests, space, underground, in hospitals, remote stations, and more. The goal is to show young people that researchers and scientists vary in every way, and that opportunities are emerging in fields that did not previously exist. 

The event on May 13 runs from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

To learn more about Elijah’s VR work for BeatSaber, listen to the full interview here: