Students win national award for scientific achievement

CLODAGH Hegarty and Aoife Parsons, students from Davitt College, Castlebar, competed among the top young scientific minds at SciFest 2016 and were awarded an Excellence in STEM award for their project The Education and Promotion of Breastfeeding to Children, Adolescents and Adults.

SciFest is an all-island STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) initiative which fosters active, collaborative and inquiry-based learning among second level students.

This year saw a record number of over 8,000 students exhibiting their projects in local and regional science fairs across the country.

Clodagh and Aoife were two of the 58 students who went on to exhibit their 31 STEM projects at the national final held in the Marino Conference Centre in Dublin last Friday.

The students created a questionnaire regarding breastfeeding. This survey was completed by over 1,000 mothers and fathers. The students also engaged in heavy promotion around breastfeeding.

SciFest is funded primarily by Science Foundation Ireland, Intel Ireland and Boston Scientific.