Monasterevin school celebrates award winning Young Scientist students

ST PAUL’S Secondary School in Monasterevin was thrilled when its Young Scientist group of Jack Boughton, Jakub Urbanczyk and Angelo Leonardo won third place in the senior category at the BT Young Scientist Exhibition in the RDS, Dublin. The students were competing in the health and wellbeing category with their project on developing a sustainable air purifier.

The group was celebrated in their school during school assembly on Monday morning and the school faculty, staff and students congratulated them and were feeling proud of them for their achievement.

The students said: “We were really surprised, but the hard work paid off in the end.” And that was no lie. 

The students worked very hard on their project, even coming into school during the recent snowfall to work on their project.

The BT Young Scientist Exhibition is one of the most prestigious second-level competitions in the country. The St Paul’s three were the first group in the school’s history to place in the awards.

Group member Angelo recounted the atmosphere of the exhibition day: “It was amazing seeing all the different projects from different schools. We just told ourselves that we were really lucky to get in in the first place and that we’d be happy with whatever we come out of this exhibition.” 

The sustainable air purifier project has been in the works for some time now, with the group entering the project into SciFest and coming out with an Eir Grid Award before entering into the Young Scientist competition. The project’s focus is around improving energy efficiency in air purifying systems.

Jack, who came up with the initial idea for the project, said: “Most air purifiers around the world use high amounts of electricity to power the fan to actually clean the air.” 

The group wanted to tackle this problem, ensuring the delivery of clean air in a sustainable way.

Congratulations to the St Paul’s group – very bright futures lie ahead for sure.