Dearbhla’s app takes third place

DEARBHLA Edwards Murphy, a third-year pupil at Kilrush Community School finished third in the Green Dragon Agri Aware Innovation Challenge 2012 final, which was held at Croke Park last week.
The competition was a search for Ireland’s most innovative pupils, who exhibited their ideas and concepts for new products and services for the agriculture, food, environment and health and safety sectors.
From over 300 entrants to the regional finals in Athlone, Dearbhla’s project was included in the final five in the health and safety section.
Dearbhla’s project was a smart phone application alerting users to the presence of carbon monoxide via a bluetooth connection to a wireless network in the home. The app alerted the smart phone user, issued instructions on the emergency of the situation, informed the user of the appropriate immediate action to be taken and contacted emergency services dialling 999.
The judges were Jim Power, economist; Ella McSweeney, RTÉ; Hedi Corr, Dublin Innovation Centre and Eugene Heary, winner of the Apprentice 2011.
Dearbhla also came third in the BT Young Scientist Competition in the social and behavioural science category with her project The Silent Killer, Carbon monoxide, How aware are we?