The top prize at the event, went to Conor King, Patrician High School, Carrickmacross, for his project on CNK Animal Solutions. 2nd Prize for the Runner-up Best Project Award was awarded to Aoife Brady, Amy Gillick & Beth Brady from St Joseph’s Secondary School, Navan, for their ‘Balancing Behaviour’ Project.

County Monaghan was well represented at SciFest@DkIT, not only did Patrician High School walk away with the Best Project, Conor was also awarded the Dawn Meats Agriculture Science Award and Patrician High School also took home the Boston Scientific Medical Devices Award which was bestowed on Cian Rafferty for his focus on The NRG-Guard: the modified mouthguard that allows the wearer to install a sports solution into the mouthguard using a slow release mechanism. Sean Kerley from Our Lady’s Secondary School in Castleblayney also went home with the Intel Technology Award for his Project called The Impact of AI on Society.

Students from Louth took home six individual awards to the wee county, winners included St Oliver’s Community College who picked up two awards, the SciFest Maths in Science Award was bestowed on Leah Newman for the ‘Out of this world rollercoasters – A Mathematical Investigation into the factors which influence rollercoaster motion and how these vary on other planets’ and the SciFest Business Excellence Institute Award  was won by Laura Rothwell & Niamh Floyd for the project on ‘What are the effects of sleep therapy techniques on quality of sleep’.  St Marys Diocesan School also picked up two awards on the day, student Cillian O’Kelly received the ESERO Discovery Space Student Award for his project entitled The Effect of Microgravity on Plants and his teacher Sophie Caine was bestowed the Discover Space Teacher Award. St Vincents Secondary School Dundalk won the SciFest Physics Award for their project ‘An attempt to create an improved artificial version of the “Helicopter seed” produced by acer Pseudoplatanus’, a project by Erin Roe, Dearbhla McKenna & Erin Finnegan. Ardee Community School saw Hayden Higgins Lynch & Ema Matulyte pick up the prestigious Regeneron Life Sciences Award for ‘Enzyme catalase’s activity and inhibition when interacting with prescribed and over the counter medicine for various health conditions.

Colaiste Dun An Ri, Cavan also walked away with two SciFest awards, the first picked up by Rachel Burns who received the SciFest Chemistry Award for her project ‘Has the solution to Irelands energy crisis been on our dinner plates this whole time? An investigation into alternative feed stocks for the production of biodiesel fuel contributing to a cleaner environment’ and the second award for Alana McElroy & Megan Hurt, who took home the EirGrid Cleaner Climate Award for ‘Periods without Plastic’ why is there a reluctance amongst females to use more sustainable period products such as period pants’.

County Meath also took home two awards with St Joesphs Secondary School, Navan picking up the SciFest Runner Up Project Award, and the Huawei Communications Award was bestowed on Emma Dowling, Emer Fanning and Ruby Rose Carberry from Loreto Secondary School, Navan, for their project investigating ‘Can we use AI to improve the quality of our homework? Can teachers tell the difference without using an online detector’.

Balbriggan’s Bremore Educate Together took home the Irish Science Associations Award (ISTA Student Award) for ‘Does brand recognition change opinion on taste’ which was awarded to Nisha Dunner & Isobel Murphy.

SciFest@DkIT co-ordinator Dr Edel Healy, Head of School of Health & Science, DkIT said:

“Today on campus has been a great day, we really enjoyed welcoming the post primary students and their teachers from our region to SciFest 2024. A massive thank you to our sponsors Intel, Boston Scientific, EirGrid, The Department of Education and all SciFest sponsors from industry and academia. It was such a wonderful day, and we were all inspired with the inventiveness and ingenuity of all the projects. We can safely say the future is bright for STEM in the Northeast.”

SciFest is an all-island STEM initiative which fosters active, collaborative and inquiry-based learning among second-level students. The programme operates throughout the school year and, being locally and regionally based and free-to-enter, is highly inclusive and accessible. Winners from each regional STEM fair go on to compete at a National Final in November.

Prize Winners

DkIT SciFest 2024 Prizewinners