Donegal Town student takes part in Department of Foreign Affairs showcase

A Donegal teenager has joined students from across Ireland at a special showcase event for young science innovators, that was hosted at the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin.

Ciara Cannon from Abbey Vocational School in Donegal Town was amongst the students selected from the entrants at this year’s BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition to attend the  Science for Development showcase that was organised by Development organisation Self Help Africa.

Her project - Using silica nanoparticles to create self-sustaining antimicrobial surface coatings – was one of those selected for the showcase.

 The student showcase assembled more than a dozen projects that the event’s organisers believed could make a valuable contribution within a global development setting.  

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Self Help Africa organises the Science for Development Award at the BT Young Scientist event each year, to encourage science students to devise projects that look at challenges and issues that affect people living in the Developing World.  The award-winners at the BT event receive a bursary, sponsored by Irish Aid, to travel with Self Help Africa on an annual schools study visit to a country where it is working.   

 “Each year we try to celebrate not just the winner of the annual ‘Science for Development Award’, but also an array of innovative student projects that could have such an application, and are worthy of recognition,” explained Self Help Africa’s event organiser, Dorothy Jacob. 

Minister of State for Overseas Development Aid and Diaspora Sean Fleming, who opened the event, said that it provided young people with a fantastic opportunity to develop an idea and turn it into something practical.  “It’s a case of doing something local that has a global impact,” he said, adding that he would encourage students and teachers across the country to think about some of these challenges and issues when they were developing their entries to the BT Young Scientist Exhibition in the future.

Self Help Africa’s acting CEO, David Dalton, praised all of the exhibitors at the showcase, and said that the event highlighted both the great work of the students involved, but also demonstrated the huge contribution that young people could play, now and in the future, to support people in poorer regions of the world.