Students from Breifne College, Cootehill Road, Co. Cavan were the winners of the Best Overall Project Award at SciFest 2009 which took place in the Institute of Technology, Sligo on the 6th May.
Colm Smyth, Eimhin Smyth and Daniel Morgan from Breifne College, with Oonagh Meighan of Discover Science and Engineering programme who won the Best Overall Project Award sponsored by INTEL Ireland for their project ‘An electronic alternative to guitar tab’ at Sci Fest 09 in IT Sligo
SciFest is a one day festival of science, which includes a competition and exhibition of projects, a selection of science talks, science demonstrations in the college laboratories and a prize-giving ceremony. 200 students in total from Counties Sligo, Mayo, Leitrim, Roscommon, Donegal, Cavan and Galway took part in the event at IT Sligo.
Colm Smyth, Eimhin Smyth and Daniel Morgan won the Best Overall Project Award with their project ‘An electronic alternative to guitar tab’. Other prizes on the day included the Abbott Runner Up Best Project Award, won by Patrick Conwell, Adrian Holmes and Richard Bourke from St. Joseph’s Secondary School Foxford, Co. Mayo for their project ‘Auto CO ventilation systems’.
The BT Best Communicator Award, which was won by Peter Connelly and Glenn Patterson Sligo Grammar School and the Discover Sensors Award, went to students Eoin Dillon, Luke Govorov and Aoife McEniff from Magh Ene College, Church Road, Bundoran, Co.Donegal.
Sheila Porter, SciFest National Coordinator, congratulated the winning students on the day, “science and technology has been identified as being key to the country’s long term growth and to the development of Ireland’s smart economy. As such, it is incredibly exciting to see the massive scale and breadth of the entries into this year’s SciFest and with greater competition than any year previous, all congratulations are due to this year’s winners. Together, our young scientists point to a very bright future for Ireland’s science and technology sectors”.
Up to 2,000 students entered SciFest 2009 which took place in fourteen Institutes of Technology around the country – Athlone, Blanchardstown, Dublin, Dundalk, Carlow, Cork, Galway/Mayo, Letterkenny, Limerick, Sligo, Tallaght, Tipperary, Waterford, and Tralee. Nearly 900 projects were entered in total in 2009, compared to 680 projects in 2008.
Sheila Porter continued, “SciFest also creates an important link with Ireland’s Institutes of Technology and industry and provides young students with a valuable opportunity to experience the study of science, engineering and ICT first hand and, by participating in hands-on science activities and experiments, students can dispose of any veil of uncertainty that may surround the study of science beyond secondary school. I would like to congratulate and thank all those who took part in this year’s exhibitions, students, teachers, local coordinators, judges and sponsors alike, and I look forward with real anticipation to another year of science and another year of SciFest.”
Members of the IT Sligo School of Science staff who organized the successful SciFest event are pictured with Oonagh Meighan of the Discover Science and Engineering programme.
SciFest was originally created as a result of the enormous success of the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition, and was designed to cater for the excess demand. In addition, SciFest provides another platform for students who wish to exhibit their work and share their findings with other like-minded students in a creative and educational environment. SciFest has the additional advantage that it is locally based which makes it more accessible to students and allows them to view the facilities and courses available in their local Institute of Technology. Last year nine Institutes of Technology hosted SciFest; this year the remaining five Institutes also hosted SciFest in response to local demand.
Following a successful pilot in 2008, an online element was added to this year’s exhibition, with Project Blogger. This allowed students to create individual blogs to keep a record of their SciFest entries and share their experiments with participating students from around the country. Such blogs then formed part of students’ exhibitions at the SciFest events, tracking the project’s path from conception to completion by uploading images, ideas, graphs and video files to the web.
SciFest is jointly funded by Intel Ireland and Discover Science and Engineering. It is supported by a number of other partners and the Institutes of Technology. The project thus creates a valuable link between the second and third level education sectors and between education and industry.
For further information please visit:
www.scifest.ie