The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
THERE WERE eight awards for Clare at the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition (BTYSTE) last week, including an individual win for one Scoil Mhuire Ennistymon student.
Alanna Hayes won the Senior Individual section of the Chemical, Physical & Mathematical Sciences category for her project ‘An Analysis of Routing Algorithms for Electronic Design’.
Meanwhile, April O’Donnell, from Mary Immaculate Secondary School Lisdoonvarna, took third in the Intermediate Individual section of the Biological & Ecological category for her project, ‘Is the Clumping Behaviour of Mussels (Mytilus edulis) affected by the Presence of a Predator?’.
There were sponsored category awards won by Clare projects in the Chemical, Physical & Mathematical Sciences and Biological and ecological categories also.
Oisin Jackson, Mary Immaculate Secondary School Lisdoonvarna won the Met Eireann award in the Chemical, Physical & Mathematical Sciences category for his ‘Statistical analysis of the relationship between precipitation and river discharge in the Aille River catchment area’.
Meanwhile in the biological and ecological category, the Jack Restan displays award went to the St Joseph’s Community College, Kilkee team of Caragh Killeen, Ailish Marrinan and Cian McInerney for their project, ‘Kelpoleum: Sugar kelp biofuel as an alternative to petroleum fuel’.
Highly commended awards were dispensed to Patrick Byrne O’Connell, Thomas O’Regan of Mary Immaculate Secondary School Lisdoonvarna for ‘The lunar effect on periwinkle (Littorina littoria) movement’; the Kilkee team for their Kelpoleum project and Oisin Jackson for his river catchment analysis.
Finally in the technology section, Oisin Coughlan of Meánscoil na mBráithre, Ennistymon, won a display award for his project, ‘The Normandy Landings: As They Happened’.
The overall winners were Shane O’Connor and Liam Carew, aged 19 and in sixth year in the Abbey School, Tipperary won with their project Assessing the impact of second-level education on key aspects of adolescents’ life and development.
The coveted prize was presented to the winners this evening in the RDS in Dublin by Minister for Education Norma Foley TD, and Managing Director of BT Ireland, Shay Walsh.
Mr Walsh, Managing Director, BT Ireland said, ‘On behalf of the entire team at BT Ireland, I wish to thank each and every student who took part in this year’s exhibition for sharing your ideas with us. After a long three years, it has been a pleasure to welcome you all back to the event in person.
“The past week has been truly inspiring, and I am in awe of your unique and individual talents. The level of creativity, innovation and research displayed over the last number of days has been nothing short of remarkable, and I am humbled and grateful to be a part of it.
“I would also like to extend my congratulations to all our winners, who join a special group of some of Ireland’s brightest minds. I have no doubt this is only the beginning of all the brilliant work you will go on to do.
“To all the teachers, parents, guardians and everyone who supported the students who entered on their journeys, I express my sincere thanks. We are hugely grateful also to our panel of esteemed judges, our sponsors and partners, and of course, our own BT team, without whom this magnificent Exhibition would not be possible.”
