The young scientists who became old hands at innovation

By Caroline O’DohertyTHE subject matter was more low-tech than hi-spec and the presentation wasn’t half as slick but the thrill of winning the Young Scientist competition was just as strong 40 years ago as it is today.

Dr John Monahan, the first-ever winner in 1965, is now chief executive of one of the leading biotechnology companies in the US but he still counts his Young Scientist award as one of his proudest achievements.

"I was on the Late Late Show with Gay Byrne. That was a big thing," he recalls, remembering how he bowled over the judges with a model demonstrating how proteins and sugars were broken down in the digestive system.

His model was made of bits of wood, metal and glass he pieced together in his own home and it earned the then Newbridge College student what he remembers as an absolute a fortune £500.

Today, he heads up Avigen in California, piecing together the intricate secrets of gene therapy to create treatments for haemophilia, Parkinson's disease and heart conditions in a business with annual sales of $3 billion.

"It's a milestone," agrees Professor Tadhg Begley, who was a student at North Monastery CBS in Cork when he won the 1973 competition with a painstaking search for minerals and pollutants in water samples he collected in jars over a number of years from the sea off Youghal where he lived. Now he inspires the same inquisitiveness and persistence in the students he works with in the chemistry department at the prestigious Ivy League Cornell University in New York State.

To mark this year's 40th anniversary of the Young Scientist award, the organisers have been tracking down past winners and about 30 will be attending a gala dinner in their honour this Saturday.

Their search has uncovered young and not-so-young scientists working all over the world, many still immersed in scientific pursuits and others who chose quite different career paths.

Among those for whom the Young Scientist award was the start of a lifelong string of honours and accolades are 1969 winner, Dr Luke Drury, formerly of Wesley College, Dublin, who became an astrophysicist, winning acclaim for his work in nuclear physics and cosmic rays.

Dr Mary Kelly-Quinn, winner in 1976, left Our Lady's Secondary School in Castleblaney to study at UCD where she now lectures in zoology and runs a freshwater research laboratory, and 1978 winner, Dr Donald McDonnell then of Crescent College Camp, Dooradoyle, Limerick, went on to do pioneering research in breast and prostate cancer.

Prof Begley admits he was disappointed his water samples didn't show traces of gold deposits in the seabed around his home 30 years ago but he believes winning the Young Scientist was worth its weight in gold.

"Young people do not often know their potential. To be honoured with a major award gives you a sense of confidence to be ambitious. Also, later on, when you start doing graduate research or any difficult undertaking, and things start to get tough as inevitably they do, having been marked out with a prestigious award makes you think, I can do this, I am a very capable person."

Dr Monahan echoes that view.

"It was certainly a very motivating thing for me. It's something that has tremendous impact, not just on the winners but on all the people who participate."