Ursuline Team win the ‘One Health AMR’ Award at BT Young Scientist

The Ursuline partnership of Ella Frend and Julie Johnson were awarded the Department of Agriculture and Department of Health ‘One Health AMR’ Award at the BT Young Scientist Exhibition in the RDS on Friday evening, 10 January.

Their project ‘Less Antibiotics, Less Resistance’ scooped the top prize in this specialist category.

Ella and Julie undertook a study of the effects of antibiotic use on dairy farms to investigate if it reduces antimicrobial resistance to bacteria. They conducted their research on three dairy herds with varying levels of antibiotic use from low, to moderate, to high. They collected milk samples which were then cultured in a veterinary lab.

Ella and Julie tested the bacteria for antimicrobial resistance to see if they could discover differences from the three different types of farms.

Their findings concluded that there was very little difference in antimicrobial resistance between the samples taken from the three farms. They took this as a positive result for dairy farming in general and for human health which they believe is not being adversely affected by antimicrobial resistance through the consumption of milk.

Congratulations to the other Ursuline duo of Róise Glynn and Clodagh O’Dwyer and to individual entrant Grace Eiffe all of whom also showcased projects at this year’s BT Young Scientist Exhibition in the RDS.

All three Ursuline teams spoke with confidence about their scientific research, how they conducted it and their findings with the judges, journalists and the general public.

The adverse weather conditions did not stop the five Ursuline TYs whose projects were among the 550 to make it to the final selection out of thousands of initial submissions. Róise and Clodagh investigated eco-anxiety and climate engagement among their peers.

They studied two groups of students to see if positive engagement with nature and weekly messages encouraging climate action and enhanced education on climate issues in one group had the desired impact of increasing awareness, reducing anxiety around climate change and improving motivation to become more involved in the environment and environmental issues.

The other group of students did not have any further engagement in the environment beyond what was provided through the TY curriculum or their own personal initiatives.

Their findings concluded that the students on the enhanced programme benefitted in terms of greater understanding of environmental issues, being more appreciative of nature and wanting to implement positive changes in their own behaviour, all of which helped to lessen their anxiety around climate change.

Grace decided to research the level of exposure given to female sport and women’s teams in the print press media. She aimed to see if their coverage was less than or on a par with their male counterparts.

Grace focused her study on a number of national newspapers noting the number of articles, prominence of reporting, pictures, word count and other relevant comparisons.

Her findings made the national print media on Friday, 10 January with an article in The Irish Independent. Grace uncovered a huge disparity between the levels of space and content given to men’s sports compared to women’s.

Women’s sporting achievements took up at most about 15% of the overall articles compared to an upper limit of 80% coverage given to men’s.

As a way of addressing this glaring imbalance she recommended that the editorial policies of newspapers and other media outlets, such as TY and radio, with regard to decisions they make around reporting on female sports and sporting
achievements, be published.

Congratulations to all the Ursuline BTYSE 2025 entrants on their hard work in pulling these excellent findings and projects together. Many thanks to their teachers and mentors Ms Molony and Ms Ryan.