Cavan students shine at BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition

Cavan schools and students were well represented at the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition 2019 which took place in the RDS Dublin over the weekend. Three of the projects caught the eye of the judging pannel and returned home with awards.

Ilona Mc Carthy, Caoimhe Byrne and Éabha Garvey from Colaiste Dun an Ri, took the third place award in the Biological and Ecological junior category for their project “An Ecological Investigation into Dún an Rí Forest Park, Kingscourt, Co. Cavan”.

In the Social and Behavioural Sciences Intermediate section Caoimhe Sexton and Hannah Young from Loreto College Cavan were highly commended for their project “Get up, get out and get off your phone! - A tool for schools”.

Ryan Lockwood's “A statistical analysis of the public’s awareness of the danger of positional asphyxiation associated with infant car seats” saw the Colaiste Dun an Ri student also receive a Highly Commended award from the judges in the individual Social and Behavioural Sciences category.

The overall winner of the 55th BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition was Adam Kelly, aged 17, a 5th year student from Skerries Community College, in Dublin, who took the top prize for his “Optimizing The Simulation Of General Quantum Circuits” project.

Other Cavan projects included Charlie Clavin, Colaiste Dun an Ri, Cavan project 'An Investigation into the number of regular shapes versus the number of Irregular shapes with 12 sides or less that can be constructed by the use of Euclidian Geometry'.
Tara Hegarty, Aisling Flood, Nadine O'Brien from St Bricins Vocational School Cavan submitted a project on “A study of body image and emotional well-being perceptions among elite sportswomen, professional models and teenage girls”.
The Individual runner-up award was presented to Yasmin Ryan, aged 16, 5th year student at St Andrew's College, Dublin for her project entitled “Discovery of the Ideal Microenvironment for the Differentiation of hiPSCs into Islets of Langerhans”. Yasmin was in the Biological and Ecological category at Intermediate level.

The Group runners-up award was presented to Danila Fedotov and Filip Caric, aged 17 and 18, respectively, 6th year students at North Monastery Secondary School, Cork for their project entitled “A Wearable Device Which Assists Caretakers by Providing them with the Information on the Well-Being of Their Patients”.
Commending the entrants the Managing Director, BT Ireland, Shay Walsh, said: “For 55 years the Exhibition has shown the ingenuity of Ireland’s youth, and this year’s Exhibition is no exception. The students at BTYSTE have sought creative and innovative solutions to some of the world’s most pressing issues, and that spirit and drive is to be commended.”

The number of project entries has almost tripled from 606 in 2000 to an impressive 1,803 in 2019, with entries submitted from across the island of Ireland. 56% of qualified entrants are female, with a significant increase of 62% in the number of girls qualifying in the Chemical, Physical, and Mathematical Sciences category this year. 10% of entries for the 2019 Exhibition are from DEIS schools, a positive indication of the power of this platform to engage participation in the critical STEM subjects.