Five of Writhlington's A Level scientists are celebrating winning the National Science Competition after two days of judging and presenting their work at the National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham.
The competition is held annually to find the best of the UK's young scientists and engineers and 400 school pupils from thousands made it through to the finals.
Matt Bell, Zoe Barnes, Heather Limond, Devin Read and Ike Shackleton entered their research of orchid microhabitats carried out during the school expedition to Sikkim, in the Himalayas, in April 2013 and carried off the top prize in the Science and Maths Competition.
Devin explained: "We each studied the habitat of a charismatic Himalayan orchid species and used the data we collected to make recommendations about growing the plants successfully in cultivation."
The students have had their research published in specialist journals and have used it to help design a new orchid exhibit at Cambridge University Botanic Gardens, which represents the diverse forest habitats of Sikkim.
Heather added: "The judges were particularly impressed with the different ways we had presented our data. It is available in poster format on the University of Cambridge website, as well as in the published articles. We hope that our work will both help people to grow the species better and protect wild populations through education and understanding of these amazing plants."
While in Sikkim, the students worked with staff and pupils from the Taktse School, Gangtok, and Zoe described this as "The best part of the whole trip".
Zoe and Devin are arranging to volunteer at Taktse School during a gap year before university and all the winners are looking forward to the next stages of their already glittering scientific careers.