President Mary McAleese received a lively and noisy welcome at the Esat BT Young Scientist and Technology awards in the RDS. She praised the hard work put in by all the students in the researching of their projects.

Dublin 4 was well represented in the awards by local schools and students. Pictured above from left are Teacher Ms Ruth Hickey, Rory McGlynn from Ballsbridge, Jack Toner and Stephen Noone from Sandymount who represented the Catholic University School, Leeson Street. They won 3rd place with a remote control fire extinguisher.

Vincent Grace from John Scottus school, Donnybrook was awarded 3rd place for his individual project ‘The application of artificial neural networks and fuzzy logic to autonomous navigation’. Emmet Kilberd and Andrew Linnie, also from John Scottus, won 2nd place with a project to prove that an ancient form of maths called ‘vedic’ can be used to improve computer speeds.

St Conleth’s had winners also. Dane Colin Pieri and Cillian Murphy won a prize with their project ‘Anatibacterial protection of keyboards using titanium dioxide’. Neil McDermott won 3rd place in the biological and ecological section with his project on ‘The effects of caffeine on co-ordination’.