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European Union Competition
The eXhIBITIon
eUroPean UnIon conTesT For YoUnG scIenTIsTs
eUroPean UnIon conTesT For YoUnG scIenTIsTs
The Young scientist exhibition was already 25 years old when its european equivalent, the european contest for Young scientists, held its first event. And from the very beginning, the Irish Young scientists selected to attend the international contest have had a major impact.
In its inaugural year, Grace O’Connor and Sinead Finn captured a first prize for their project on a crop fractionation industry. Since then Irish participants have won 35 prizes including 15 first prizes, the most recent in Prague in 2013 when Ciara Judge, Emer Hickey and Sophie Healy-Thow won a first in biology for their project on the effects of bacteria on plant germination.
The Contest is an initiative of the European Commission, its goal to promote contacts and cooperation between Europe’s Young Scientists. Only students who have won national competitions can take part, so those who participate are there with the very best of their peers from across Europe.
The event is a central part of the Commission’s efforts amongst young people to promote science as a career given it is managed by the Directorate-General for Research, the body that coordinates the EU’s research budget. It falls within the Science and Society activities that are part of DG Research’s role in building a good relationship between researchers and wider European society.
The contest uses a judging panel of 18 people who all have an international reputation and who carry out their duties as individuals. They are not there as representatives of any company, institution or country. They are selected on the basis of scientific criteria and come from both academia and from industry. The Commission appoints them, taking note of geographical and gender balance and up to a third of this panel of members is replaced each year. Ireland’s remarkable performance in the contest over the past 25 European contests is testimony to the success of the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition. The Irish event starts with an initial 2,000 projects submitted and this is shortlisted to the current 550 participating projects. This ensures that the winning entry will be of a very high standard and of a quality that can match or better any competing Young Scientists that our students come up against. In the main our winners are in their teens, as young as 14, yet they face projects where the students are in their early 20s. They do not get any special treatment for possibly being younger than other contestants however and the European judges apply the same very high standards for all. Their criteria includes originality and creativity when approaching the initial problem; skill, care and thoroughness in designing and conducting the study; the contestant’s follow-through to a project’s conclusion; reasoning and clarity in the interpretation of the results; and the quality of the written presentation. And key to all of these criteria, the participant must be able to discuss their project with the judges and explain it with clarity and assurance.
This is a tall order for our Young Scientists but year after year they rise to the occasion. As co-founder of the Irish Young Scientist Exhibition Tony Scott puts it, the judges and the event itself must be doing something right to have achieved our enviable record at the European Contest for Young Scientists.
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