Ursuline girls leading Sligo at 54th BT Young Scientist

THE Ursuline College has the highest number of Sligo entries in this year’s BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition.

The 54 th annual competition will showcase four projects from the Ursuline, two from Jesus & Mary Secondary School Enniscrone, and one each from Summerhill and the Mercy colleges.

It’s the highest number of projects the Ursuline has ever entered to the competition. Nine Ursuline students will showcase their projects from tomorrow, Wednesday 10 th - Saturday 13th January.

Their projects include an investigation into why more boys go into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) careers, does time fly?, DIY speakers and an app guiding users on CPR in an emergency.

Enniscrone projects include research on the influence of King Arthur on Harry Potter novels and a study of non-marine mollusc shells found at Bartagh, Enniscrone.

The Mercy entry investigates the impact of sleep on student performance in class, while the Summerhill entry looks at reasoning and predictions in intelligent systems.

The 15 Sligo inspiring students will join over 1,100 others at the RDS this week to showcase their work to an expected 50,000+ visitors and 84 judges.

Irish astronaut in training Norah Patten will host a live Q&A on Thursday 11 th January at 3.15pm in the Concert Hall, RDS.

Norah will speak about her vigorous sub-orbital training in Florida to become the first Irish person to travel in space.

The world’s most famous hacker Kevin Mitnick will perform a live hack at BT Mindshare also on Thursday at 5.30pm in the BT Arena, RDA. Once wanted by the FBI, now turned trusted security consultant to the Fortune 500, Kevin will bring insight and experience alive to a room full of senior business professionals where security is top of their agenda.

Hosted by TG4’s Roisin Ní Thomáin and broadcaster Aidan Power, the BT Young Scientist is the largest event of its kind in Europe.