Limerick students present time-travelling learning and Earth-friendly cups at SciFest

VISIONARY Limerick students have shown impressive ingenuity with virtual-reality time-travel and forward-thinking climate action.

One pair of Limerick students have won the regional heat of the SciFest competition, with another receiving a prestigious EirGrid Cleaner Climate Award.

A virtual reality experience could give students a new perspective of a World War One battlefield.

Created by Zack Bannon Griffin and Luke O’Loughlin Byrne, the project wowed the judges at the regional heat of the TUS Moylish SciFest, winning the heat with the education-centered project.

The students from Ardscoil Rís Secondary School have shown their ingenuity through their project presented at the contest entitled, ‘The Archive - Using VR to assist in Junior Cycle study’.

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The aim of the project is for Junior Cert students to place themselves right in the heart of the World War One battlefield.

By using virtual reality and placing the user in several scenes of history and allowing them to experience these events, the project has created a new learning outlet.

For the project, they looked at World War One as their subject matter using the Godot game engine and the GDScript coding language.  

Describing their project, the students wrote: “To create the scenes of history we will be taking models off a website called Sketchfab and putting them together in a scene using a program called Blender. We are using an AI narrator to narrate these scenes so we don't have to hire voice actors.”

Additionally a student from Coláiste Chiaráin in Croom, has taken home the prestigious EirGrid Cleaner Climate Award from the competition at TUS.

The prize is awarded to the student or team whose project demonstrates both technical excellence and a tangible positive impact to energy and environmental sustainability. 

SEE MORE: PICTURES: Limerick students scoop top prize for futuristic eco-village project

The third year student, Dara Ajala, impressed judges with his project entitled “Bio&C”, which analyses the creation and potential of biodegradable cups to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and to minimise environmental impact’. 

This is the second year in a row a student from Coláiste Chiaráin has been awarded the EirGrid prize.

His winning submission was chosen from over 100 projects on show at the college campus event.

These Limerick winners will go on to compete at a national final in November, then from the national final to compete at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair in America and attend the Long Night of Science in Berlin.