Athlone Community College student Kayleigh McNamara won the Ombudsman for Children Award at the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition.

Awards galore for local projects at BT Young Scientist Exhibition

Tadhg Carey

Published: Fri 12 Jan 2024, 9:50 PM

Last updated: Mon 15 Jan 2024, 10:57 AM

It was a bumper day for the Athlone and Moate region at the 60th BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition (BTYSTE) this evening with local schools taking home a multitude of awards.

Four special awards were won by projects from local schools.

The .ie Award (Technology) was won by Srinidhi Karthik, of Athlone Community College, for the project, 'Removing biases in the world of Artificial Intelligence'.

Another Athlone Community College student, Kayleigh McNamara, won The Ombudsman for Children’s Office Award (Health & Wellbeing) for the project 'Giving Girls a Voice: How Sucessful is the HSE at treating girls with endometriosis'.

There was also a special award for a Moate Community School project. The Self Help Africa Science for Development Award (Health & Wellbeing) went to Rachel Hamm and Ella Ryan for their project, 'Banana Bandages: A Sustainable Approach to Wound Care'

Ella Ryan and Rachel Hamm who won the Self Help Africa Science for Development Award.

And in Ballymahon, Keira Hopkins, Grace Cassells and Lara Flood, of Ballymahon Vocational School won The ABP Farm Sustainability Award (Technology) for their project, 'Are cow collars worth the hype?'. They were also highly commended in their category.

The Ballymahon Vocational Schools students who won the The ABP Farm Sustainability Award (Technology). Included are Keira Hopkins, Grace Cassells and Lara Flood.

Athlone Community College also won one of the educator awards in the shape of teacher Emma Buckley, who was announced as the Amgen Biological & Ecological Educator of Excellence Award.

And to add to these awards, there were five 1st place category awards, and two 3rd place category awards.

Moate Community School brought home an amazing three 1st place category awards.

Sibeal Egan and Doireann Naughten were first in the Junior Group Health and Wellbeing category with the project 'Fowl Play: Investigating the Effectiveness of Improved Husbandry and Diet at Reducing the Bacterial Contamination of Hen Eggs.'

Domhnall Molloy, Terry Heffernan, Kerry Sun were 1st Junior Group Technology category with their project, 'EweAlert: A Warning Device to Notify Sheep Farmers of Dog Attacks'

Moate also took the 1st Junior Group Biological & Ecological category prize with the project, 'Optimising Hydroponics for Use in Developing Countries' by Laura Fox, Lucy Keane and Niamh Noone

Athlone Community College's Srinidhi Karthik followed up her.ie Special Awards with a first place in the Junior Individual Technology category, while Sean Sibindi also of Athlone Community College was the winner in the Senior Individual Social & Behavioural Sciences category for his project 'Psycho-acoustics and their applications in psychiatric conditioning'.

There were third place category awards for Moate CS students Rachel Hamm and Ella Ryan, to add to their special award, in the Health and Wellbeing Intermediate Group category and for Athlone Community College student Kayleigh McNamara in the 3rd Senior Individual Health & Wellbeing category, to add to her Ombudsman for Children special award.

Meanwhile, Our Lady's Bower students Michelle Hughes and Muireann Lambe received a display award for their project 'Moove Over Biodegradable – Let’s Talk Edible'.

Seán O’Sullivan, aged 17, a 5th year student from Coláiste Chiaráin in Limerick, won the overall top prize with his project, VerifyMe: A new approach to authorship attribution in the post-ChatGPT era. The BTYSTE perpetual trophy was presented to the winner this evening at the RDS by Minister for Education, Norma Foley TD and Managing Director of BT Ireland, Shay Walsh.

Since OpenAI released ChatGPT in November of 2022, the line between human-written and AI-generated text has blurred, leaving academia and industry searching for a reliable method to discern “true” human authorship. In his project, Seán considered the challenges of author verification in the context of the significant improvements in Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT. He developed a novel approach to author authentication that identifies stylistic differences to verify authorship.

Chair of the Technology Group Judging Panel, Leonard Hobbs said, “The judges were hugely impressed by Sean’s innovative approach to addressing a problem that has only recently emerged and his programming skills in architecting a complex software solution.”

Seán is the 60th recipient to win the highly coveted trophy, and the top prize of €7,500. Seán will now also represent Ireland at the European Union Contest for Young Scientists (EUCYS) taking place later this year in the European City for Science 2024 - Katowice, Poland.

Full details in our print edition on Wednesday.