Louth schools scoop top prizes at SciFest

Schools from across the North Leinster and South Ulster region recently came together with hundreds of their second-level student peers to compete in the SciFest@DkIT 2024 regional competition at Dundalk Institute of Technology (DkIT).

On the day this exciting and high energy event had 140 projects on exhibition and almost 300 second level students in attendance. The judges had an extremely difficult task of shortlisting the regional winners due to the high calibre of projects presented.

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.

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.