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Richard O’Shea, an 18 year old sixth year student from Scoil Mhuire Gan Smal, Blarney, Co Cork was named the winner of the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition 2010 with his project entitled, “A biomass fired cooking stove for developing countries.” Richard received the prestigious honour for his pioneering work on the design of a biomass-fueled cooking stove for use in developing countries. Over 2 billion people in the world depend on stoves to cook their meals every day, and his project built a new one which uses as little fuel as possible and which ideally produces no smoke. Richard made a strong impression on the judges with his detailed research into the chemical processes involved in burning timber, and with the various designs he came up with using very simple materials such as tin cans and nails which are very easy to find in Third World countries. An added bonus is that his stoves can be built using simple tools such as a Swiss army knife.
Adrian Weckler from the Sunday Business Post was at the exhibition and interviewed Richard.

The award for individual runner-up went to Hannah Eastwood from Loreto College Coleraine, Co Derry for her project entitled “Green rust the good gal” which was entered in the Senior Section of the Chemical, Physical & Mathematical Sciences category. Other awards presented, included Best Group, which went to Paul McKeever and Bryan Murphy, Abbey Christian Brothers Gs, Co Down for their project entitled “Specs Detector” which was entered in the Intermediate section of the Technology category and also won the NI award, new in 2010, for the best overall project from entries throughout Northern Ireland. The award for group runner-up went to Leona Chow & Mollieanne Gallagher, Alexandra College, Co Dublin for their project entitled “In vitro study of how various amounts of alcohol and caffeine affect protein degradation by the stomach enzyme pepsin” entered in the Intermediate Section of the Biological & Ecological Sciences category.

This year’s exhibition saw 1,135 students compete with 509 projects from 32 counties across Ireland. Further information on the exhibition, including videos of this year’s competitors can be found on the BT Young Scientist website.