Young Scientist

Our Young Scientist Project was ‘Formulating a seaweed based skin cream using the North Clare seaweeds Fucus serratus and Fucus vesiculosus for potential use in the cosmeceutical industry” came from a previous project idea in our school, which found that seaweeds had anti-bacterial and anti-oxidant properties.

After spending five days in school during the Christmas holidays to finish preparing our report booklet, it was safe to say we were ready for Dublin! On Wednesday 6th January, we set out to the RDS Dublin, accompanied by Ms Sheridan, who had greatly helped us with our project.

We arrived in Dublin around 10 o’clock, and began to set up our stand. Over the next few days, until Saturday, we would have three judges; one Wednesday and two Thursday.

The Exhibition was officially opened at the opening ceremony by President Michael D Higgins. After this our first judge arrived. The Second day, our second and third judging took place. On the Friday evening there was the awards ceremony. After the awards ceremony we walked to our stand we were rushing as it was late and we were tired and hungry when we arrived to our stand we were greeted by a green rosette which was a highly commended award we were all so happy and blown away to have got an award. The Young Scientist Competition was a brilliant experience and I would definitely do it all over again for the experience and also for the fun of it all. I must say it was a huge amount of work but it was definitely worth every bit of it. Ms Sheridan gave us a huge amount of help during the young scientist project and without her help it might not have happened.

Written by Ramona Greene, Roisin Callinan and Eleanor O Loughlin.