Loreto College Coleraine was awarded the prize for ‘MATRIX Best Northern Ireland School’ at the BT Young Scientist Awards held in Dublin’s RDS on the 13th January.
Loreto students won in two categories – Dónal Close and Sian Donaghy won the ‘BT – Northern Ireland Best Project’ for their entry ‘Phone Book Physics’, while Emmett Brolly received first place Senior Individual in the Chemical, Physical and Mathematical Sciences category for his entry ‘Bead Fountains’.
A total of 2,091 projects and 375 schools across Ireland entered the event this year, with 550 projects being accepted in this year’s finals with a total of 1,142 students competing. The top prize went to 16 year old Shane Curran, a 5th year student from Terenure College, Dublin, for his project entitled ‘qCrypt: The quantum-secure, encrypted, data storage solution with multijurisdictional quorum sharding technology’.
Matrix has sponsored the award for the best Northern Ireland school since 2013.
Education Minister, Peter Weir said: “I would like to congratulate all of the students from Northern Ireland who have taken part in the Exhibition this year, you should all be very proud of what you have achieved.
“I would like to acknowledge the hard work that the students have put into their projects but also the support shown by all the teachers and schools who have helped these students to bring their projects to life.
“The BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition is a real highlight in the school calendar and the continued support by BT is vital, helping this event to go from strength-to-strength and become bigger and better each year.”
The following Northern Ireland schools were also highly commended:
- St Mary’s College, Derry~Londonderry for their project ‘SCOBY SCOBY Do’ in the Junior Individual section of the Chemical, Physical and Mathematical Sciences (CPM) category and ‘Investigating the effect of reheating pasta on the rate of digestion of its starch by amylase’ in the Intermediate Group section of the CPM category;
- Ballymena Academy Antrim for their project ‘Branch Strike Detector’ in the Senior Individual section of the Technology category;
- St Patrick’s High School in Armagh for their project ‘An investigation into how foam reduces spillage in liquids’ in the Junior Group section of the CPM category;
- St Catherine’s College Armagh for their project ‘Irish dancing is a sport, not just a hobby’ in the Junior Group section of the Biological and Ecological category and for their project ‘Eiseapláinéid a Fhiosrú’ in the Intermediate Group section of the CPM category;
- St Killian’s College in Antrim for their project ‘Distance Diagnostics’ in the Junior Group section of the Technology category;
- South Eastern Regional College Bangor Campus for their project ‘Investigating the link between habitat and the antibacterial effect of honey’ in the Senior Group section of the Biological and Ecological category.