First Year Trip To BT Young Scientist

On Friday the 10th of January our First Years headed into the RDS to support our eight students from Junior and Senior Cycle representing St David's in this year's BT Young Scientist Competition.

The First Years had the opportunity to experience all exhibits on the show floor and explore all the activities and stalls available at BT Young Scientist.

We had two entries from Transition Year: Dylan Rice, Chester Medidas and Eoghan Waters presented their BT Young Scientist project on the build up of lactic acid in the muscles while Alannah Lynch presented her project on the distillation of ethanol from expired hand sanitiser for perfume production.

Kate MacAdam of 5th Year presented her project on attitudes and awareness towards youth mental health services in her local area. Kate also had the exciting opportunity to discuss her project with President Micheal D Higgins on Wednesday.

Ashley Cahatol presented her project on whether Vitamin D can impact adolescents sleep quality and mood, presenting her findings to Taoiseach Simon Harris during the week.

Poppy Mullally presented her project with a comparative study of the diversity and frequency of fungi species between native and planted forests in Wicklow. Congratulations to Poppy who won the national ISTA Senior Photography competition in the process.

Isabel Deane-Jermiin of Second Year presented her project on the differential impact of climate change on different regions of Ireland and yesterday she spoke to the Tanaiste of Ireland Micheal Martin. Isabel also had the opportunity to present her findings to Met Eireann and was interviewed by the Irish Independent.

Finally, Fifth Year Shriya Mishra presented her cutting-edge project as she created a safer and more efficient verification and authentication system that aims to retrieve less user data. Shriya also had the chance to speak with Tanaiste Martin, who was fascinated by her work.

We would like to wish all these students the very best as they await the results of the competition, to be announced over the weekend!

A big thank you to Mr. Lynch who has helped all the students prepare their projects in advance to the competition. And thank you to Mr Hassett and the Science teachers for organising this fantastic day out for the First Years.

Report by Noah Morgan

Photographs by Elijah Pegman