Synge St students claim BT Young Scientists top prize

Leaving Cert students Eric Doyle and Mark Kelly (pictured), both aged 17, from Synge Street CBS, Dublin have taken top honours at this year’s BT Young Scientists and Technology Exhibition 2012. Their project Simulation Accuracy in the Gravitational Many-Body Problem was entered in the senior section of the Chemical, Physical & Mathematical Sciences category.

Doyle and Kelly were presented with a cheque for €5,000, tickets to the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the opportunity to represent Ireland at the 24th European Union Young Scientist competition taking place in Bratislava in September and a Waterford Crystal trophy.

Almost 1,200 students from 30 counties covering 550 projects from 221 schools nationwide took part in this year’s competition, which attracted some 40,000 visitors.

Prof Pat Guiry, head judge, Chemical, Physical and Mathematical category, said: "[This] project develops a novel mathematical approach which has a diverse range of applications from satellite placement to predicting network congestion in telecommunications. In the opinion of the judging panel, an exceptional level of mathematical proficiency was demonstrated. Starting from Euler’s investigation in 1760 on the motion of planets, they simulated this complicated ‘many-body’ problem using advanced computation and evaluated the accuracy of the solutions. Of particular note, they included an in-built accuracy estimation in their solution."

Further awards included Best Individual which went to Eoin Farrell from St Eunan’s College, Donegal for his project Paediatric Resuscitation: How Reliable are Existing Weight Estimation Methods in Ireland.

The award for individual runner-up went to Aoife Gregg, from Loreto College, St Stephens Green, Dublin, for her project Cryptography: A Study of the Irish Language entered in the Chemical, Physical & Mathematical Sciences category, intermediate section.

The award for group runner-up went to Deirdre Harford & Colleen Kelly from Loreto Secondary School, Balbriggan for their project A Search for Genes associated with Drought Resistance in Potatoes entered in the Biological & Ecological Sciences category, senior section.

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