Student winners of Self Help Africa\u2019s 2023 \u2018Science for Development Award\u2019 continued on their winning roll, when they were awarded two further prestigious schools prizes for their research projects, this year.<\/p>
Vedh Kannan and Will Carkner from Sutton Park began their prize-winning run when they collected the Irish Aid sponsored \u2018Science for Development Award\u2019 for their malaria diagnostic \u2018BloodBox,\u2019 at the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition, last January.<\/p>
And the successes continued when, joined by classmate Thomas Forbes, the north Dublin students receives the 2023 \u2018Young Economist of the Year\u2019 award for a research project on the \u2018Potential for Congestion Pricing in Irish Cities,\u2019 and then Vedh Kannan turned his focus back to medicine, to receive the overall prize at this year\u2019s SciFest for a project: \u2018Counting on a Cure: Using Mathematics to Target Metastatic Cancer Growth\u2019. <\/p>
Vedh wil now compete for the SciFest STEM Champion Award of 2023 at the national finals of that competition, in November.<\/p>
The two Sutton Park boys won this year\u2019s Self Help Africa prize at the BT Young Scientist Expo for \u2018Bloodbox,\u2019 which they describe as a diagnostic tool that has a potential application as a low cost solution to detecting malaria and other similar blood borne diseases.<\/p>
They received the award at the 2023 science fair together with a \u20ac7,000 Irish Aid bursary to travel with Self Help Africa on a schools study visit to Africa. The boys were commended for their work by Minister of State Sean Fleming , who said that their project was a wonderful example of how young people could use science to create a better and more sustainable world for all. The Sutton Park students were \u201can example of young people pursuing and researching ideas to improve societies at home and abroad,\u201d the Minister said.<\/p>
Vedh and Will, together with their Sutton Park science teacher Joanne Hanratty are scheduled to travel this Autumn on a science students study visit to Africa, where they will be accompanied by student and teachers who were the 2020, 2021 and 2022 winners of the \u2018Science for Development\u2019 prize, but did not participate in a schools visit because of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions that were in place.<\/p>
The \u2018Science for Development Award\u2019 is a competition that has been devised by Self Help Africa\u2019s Global Citizenship Education programme to promote and encourage students to look to global development challenges when they are devising projects for the annual BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition. It is sponsored annually by Irish Aid.<\/a><\/p>