Derry computer programmer up for top IT award

Life is pretty hectic for young Allstate computer programmer Deirbhile Leonard at the moment and it all began with her love of GCSE Maths.

Deirbhile has been shortlisted for the Belfast Telegraph’s Young IT Professional of the Year award and is looking forward to the ceremony in Belfast's MAC Theatre on Friday evening.

“It’s going to be a great night,” said Deirbhile, “I am really looking forward to it. A big group of us are going up from Allstate because we have been nominated for five awards in total.

Deirbhile will have to clear some space on the mantelpiece because she also won the award for the Best Use of AI for Personalised Learning at the GenAIEdu conference hosted by Ulster University in August.

Speaking to The Derry News, Deirbhile explained her ingenious, multi prize-winning project.

“For my final year project at university, I developed a computer programme, primarily for GCSE students and teachers, which uses AI to generate questions aligned with the GCSE specification for a given subject, to help students with their revision,” said Deirbhile, who is a former student of Holy Cross College in Strabane.

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“The programme generates questions similar to the ones which might come up in exams. It means students can practise with these questions rather than doing the ones that are available online. The online questions can become outdated very quickly because exam specifications update all the time,” she added. “But the programme not only generated exam questions, it also dynamically changed the difficulty. So, if a student was struggling, it made the questions easier to build them up to the GCSE standard.

“I was also awarded the Ulster University Kainos Prize 2024/25 for this project. The Kainos prize is an award programme for women studying computing at Ulster University.

“The ceremony is taking place on December 12, at Magee, and I am really looking forward to attending with my mammy, Grainne, and daddy, Patrick.”

Deirbhile was nominated for the Young IT Professional of the Year award by her employer, Allstate, in recognition of her achievements at university and her volunteering. She has been working with the company for the past three years.

“I began working at Allstate on a student placement. I graduated in July and during my final year at university, I worked there part time. I have now been lucky to secure a graduate job and I love it here. In the future, I would be interested in exploring more to do with AI.”

Allstate computer programmer Deirbhile Leonard is a recent graudate of Computer Science from Ulster University Magee.

For anyone who is interested in seeing what her job involves, Deirbhile is also speaking at the TechTides Youth Conference on November 18.

She added: “The main TechTides conference is taking place in the Millennium Forum and alongside it the TechTides Youth conference is running in Derry’s North West Regional College, for people aged 15 to 20 years old.

“Its aim is to give students from different schools and North West Regional College an insight into IT.”

One of Deirbhile’s most eye-catching projects is her Rubick’s Cube Solver. Seeing it in operation is amazing.

“It originated through Allstate recently launched North West Digital Hub and Future Innovators Competition, which gives £30,000 to eight schools across Derry and Strabane to encourage students to get creative with technology and robotics. The Rubick’s Cube Solver showed them what was possible.

“Each school was given a Lego Spike and iPad set and asked to build something in response to a PSNI prompt around safe driving.

“All key stages were involved, from nursery to school leavers, with students able to win a prize of £2,000 for their school.”