BT Young Scientist winner announced at special ceremony

A fifth year student in Limerick’s Coláiste Chiaráin has won the overall prize in the BT Young Scientist Exhibition with a project to devise a new solution to settling issues regarding authorship in the post Chat GPT era, while a fourth-year student in Bandon Grammar School was awarded the runner up individual award for a project about the challenges facing Junior Cycle maths students who have dyslexia.

Seán O’Sullivan was presented with the BT Young Scientist trophy and a cheque for €7,500 by Education Minister Norma Foley at the award ceremony on Friday evening. 

The Limerick student becomes the 60th bearer of the coveted Young Scientist title and will now represent Ireland at the European Union Contest for Young Scientists which is to take place later this year in the European City for Science 2024, Katowice in Poland. 

Minister Foley described Seán’s win as a ‘testament to his hard work and dedication and the unwavering support of his family, teachers and school’.

The chairman of the Technology Group Judging Panel, Leonard Hobbs said the adjudicators were hugely impressed by Seán’s innovative approach to addressing a problem that had only recently emerged and ‘his programming skills in architecting a complex software solution’.

Recognition for Cork student 

Philippa McIntosh, a sixteen-year-old fourth-year student in Bandon Grammar School, the school attended by Cork’s last overall winner, Gregory Tarr in 2021, was the winner of the runner-up individual award.

“Philippa has conducted a very rigorous research project and has clearly shown that the phrasing of questions on the Junior Certificate higher level maths exams means that students who are actually good at maths but experience reading challenges, may be disadvantaged by over-complex wording,” said Dr. Sinéad Smyth, the head of the Social and Behavioural Individual Judging Panel. 

“This important finding should be taken on board in curriculum design and assessment.”

Best group 

Dublin students, Abigail O’Brien Murray, Erica O’Brien Murray and Olivia O’Shea from Loreto Secondary School in Balbriggan won first prize for best group with the runner-up spot going to Tralee sisters Ciara and Saoirse Murphy from the Presentation Secondary School.

The winners of the group prize in Balbriggan presented a project entitled ‘Let's Save the Common Ash’, a project which won the group runner-up award in 2023 and this year’s updated presentation went one better.

“These young scientists carried out several large and robust experiments, involving both lab and field testing,” said Dr. Richard O’Hanlon, a judge on the Group Biological and Ecological Panel.

“Building on work they presented in the 2023 BTYSTE, they found that their treatments had the ability to reduce disease by more than 80%.

“This work is an important step towards developing a pathway to save our trees.” 

The runner-up group project by the Murphy sisters from Tralee was described as an ‘exciting and impactful project’ with ‘real potential to save lives and lead to earlier treatments’ by the chairman of the adjudicating panel in the Health and Wellbeing group category. 

The project was entitled ‘AID-CARE-TREAT (ACT), an immediate, accessible, technological aid to assist in medical emergencies, supported by a comprehensive repository of medical information’.

BT Ireland Managing Director Shay Walsh said he had been ‘lucky enough to be involved in the exhibition for almost quarter of a century since BT first custodians’. “Being able to see first-hand the creativity and innovation of Ireland’s future leaders has been a real privilege,” he said.