The winner of the 48th annual BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition 2012 were Leaving Cert students Eric Doyle and Mark Kelly, from Synge Street CBS, Dublin 8 have taken home the top prize for their project entitled, “Simulation accuracy in the gravitational many-body problem” in the Chemical, Physical & Mathematical Sciences category, senior section.
Eric & Mark 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 competed for the coveted title ‘Winner of the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition 2012.’
Colm O’Neill, CEO, BT Ireland said, “The passion and enthusiasm we have seen from the students taking part this week has been outstanding. This year’s exhibition was bigger and better than ever before and the reaction from the students, teachers and visitors to the RDS this week has been amazing. We live in a continually changing world and what we have seen from the students this week is that they have the foresight and innovation to come up with real problem solving ideas that can help Ireland to grow and develop into the future. Huge congratulations to Eric & Mark and all the winners. I look forward to watching their progress in the coming years,” he added.
Professor Pat Guiry, Head Judge, Chemical, Physical & Mathematical category said, “The 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.”
