Louth students among award winners at 60th BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition

The 60th BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition

Above: Jane McGee, Moya O’Neill and Jane McGee from St Vincent's Secondary School Louth with their project 'Testing which kind of chocolate has the most detrimental effect on your singing voice' at the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition 2024 in the RDS Dublin (Photos: Fennell Photography)

Students from Louth were among the award winners at the 60th BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition which was held at the RDS Dublin from Thursday 11 January to Saturday 13 January.

Over 1,100 students from across the country took part in the exhibition with judging carried out by 85 expert judges.

Louth students picked up awards in both the Special Awards category and in the Display Awards category, with one student picking up two awards in this year's competition.

From Dundalk Grammar School, Solomon Doyle was awarded 1st Senior Individual in the Technology category for his project "DermAI: Novel Approach to the Mitigation of Algorithmic Bias within CNN Based Skin Lesion Classification".

Solomon also took home The AMD Award, in the Special Awards category for his project.

In the Display Awards category, two Louth projects took home awards. Cillian O’Kelly from St Mary’s Diocesan School won an award in the Biological & Ecological category for his project, The Effect of Microgravity on Plants.

In the Health & Wellbeing category, Moya O'Neill, Mia Gogarty and Jane McGee from St Vincent’s Secondary School in Dundalk, won an award for their project, "Testing which kind of chocolate has the most detrimental effect on your singing voice".

Among the Louth students at this year's competition, were Ryan McLoughlin Smith, Fionnuala Johnston and Luke Matthews from Colaiste Ris in Dundalk, pictured below, with their project "To Investigate Noise Pollution and Cheaper Ways to Integrate Sound Proofing Methods into already Existing Buildings"

Also at this year's competition, Lorcan Garvin, pictured below, from Colaiste Chu Chulainn in Dundalk, took part with his project "Which beach sand in Co. Louth has the most microplastics?".

The winner of the 60th BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition (BTYSTE) top prize was Seán O’Sullivan, a 5th year student from Coláiste Chiaráin in Limerick, for his project, "VerifyMe: A new approach to authorship attribution in the post-ChatGPT era".

The BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition 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. It is supported by valued partners including the Department of Education, Analog Devices, Amgen, Stripe, and RTÉ. Learn more at www.btyoungscientist.com.