McAleese: Who needs gold mines when we have brain power?
“There is nothing flat about the RDS today — it is a national grid of intellectual energy,” she said.
“It holds vaults of proof of the determination, organisation and capacity for sheer hard slog of our school students.”
The president, accompanied by husband Martin, said the world had lots of problems that needed dedicated, curious people to find good, workable, solutions.
“We don’t have oil wells or gold mines in Ireland but we have amazing young brain power and, if you want to see it at work, this is the place to be,” she said.
Students involved in the 520 projects have been accepted for the exhibition — the largest of its kind in Europe and one of the longest-running in the world.
BT chief executive Graham Sutherland said the exhibition had a pretty straight-forward objective — to bring science, technology, maths, and engineering alive in schools across the island and to help people realise their relevance to everyday life, to career choice and to the future prosperity of our economy.
“My message is simple: these are challenging economic times but this event is about hope and optimism for the future,” he said.
Last year’s top young scientist, Cork student Richard O’Shea, who designed a stove for use in poor countries, got a huge cheer from students attending the official opening.
The Young Scientist of 2010 while a sixth year student at Scoil Mhuire Gan Smal in Blarney, Co Cork, conducted an 18-month research project to design and build a highly efficient and near smoke-free cooking stove from waste materials, mainly tin cans.
Asked how he fared in his Leaving Certificate examination last summer, he replied as if it was no big deal. “I did OK — 575 points,” said Richard, who is now studying energy engineering at University College Cork.
Richard also represented Ireland in the European Young Scientist competition in Lisbon, Portugal last September. “Ah, it was good fun but it was a bit difficult too because the standard of the projects was scary,” he recalled.
“One guy on my left had built a jet engine and the guy on my right had built robots that could explore an area. And I had tin cans,” said Richard, who was very modest because he was also one of the competition’s prize winners.
Exhibition prize winners will be announced tomorrow night and the event will be open to the public from today until Saturday.
Apart from the 346 participating schools, 35,000 visitors are expected to come through the doors of the RDS to view the projects and the impressive array of entertainment acts.
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