A young Kelowna man is looking forward to the next chapter in his life after earning one of the Schulich Leader Scholarships, given to just 100 students across Canada.
Meshach Emke has been awarded a $120,000 scholarship as part of Canada's largest and most prestigious science, technology, engineering and math scholarship.
"It can be kind of a competitive process even to get the school nomination. Thankfully, I was the only one that applied," said Emke.
Candidates are elected from a pool of more than 350,000 candidates across Canada, with over 1,400 graduating high school students being nominated.
Making Emke's scholarship even more remarkable is that he was homeschooled and did remote learning up until grade 12 this year. Emke lived in Tatlayoko Lake, B.C. where he developed a love of outdoor pursuits.
Emke graduated from Kelowna Christian School this year and he will be pursuing a career in engineering, starting with applied sciences at UBC Okanagan this fall.
"I really want to work for an innovative company. There's this one in Squamish that really interests me, Firestorm. They're using drones to fight wildfires."
Emke said he hopes to work with artificial intelligence and he is spending his summer working for a New York-based AI company, "I'm going to be building a database of porosity measurements across the U.S. for them to train their AI model."
Emke said he had to write four or five different essays to earn his scholarship, but said it was well worth it.
"If you're a kid looking to apply for scholarships, just do it. It only takes, one successful application to really have a big, big impact on your life," he said.
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