Kildare students garner awards at BT Young Scientist Exhibition

THIS year’s BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition (BTYSTE) Awards saw five Kildare schools bring home six awards.

The BTYSTE is designed to raise schools’ engagement in the critical subjects of science, technology, engineering, and maths (STEM). The exhibition calls upon students aged 12-19 years from all over the island of Ireland to showcase innovative science and technology projects.

A group of students from Coláiste Lorcáin secondary school in Castledermot took home a special award for their project on how little time is saved on a journey when speeding, called ‘Educate to Decelerate’.

Róisin O’Reilly, Akhila Thelakattu and Claire O’Sullivan were delighted with their win.

“We were shocked because we didn’t expect it at all. We were so grateful that they chose us,” they said.

“Our project was about telling people about how little time they save in speeding and bringing that awareness to our community so that we could get the speed down there, because speeding is such a major factor in today’s death toll on Irish roads”.

Jack Boughton, Jakub Urbanczyk, and Angelo Leonardo from St Paul’s Secondary School in Monasterevin were the third senior group to take home an award in the Health and Wellbeing category for their ‘Air Purifier’ project.

Grace Joyce and Amira Curran from Newbridge College were the first junior group to receive an award in the Social and Behavioural Science category for their project titled: ‘The Grade Inflation Bubble: Is the Leaving Certificate creating a generation of inequality and false success?’.

Eli-John Kiernan from Clongowes Wood College, won the award for first junior individual in the category of Chemical, Physical and Mathematical Sciences for his project on statistical analysis of bowling in cricket in males and females.

Those highly commended were: Laura Heneghan, Grace Walshe and Lauren Kenny from St Mary’s College, Naas with their project on the performance on benzoyl peroxide for killing cutibacterium acnes, and Annemarie Treacy, Maisie Murray and Ciara Daniels from Newbridge College for their project on the effects of social media on the daily lives of teenagers.

This year’s exhibition took place from Thursday, January 9 until Saturday, January 11, and showcased hundreds of innovative ideas from schools across the country.