Student scoops top EU young scientist prize

A 16-YEAR-OLD Dublin student has scooped one of the three top prizes in the European Union Contest for Young Scientists in mathematics.

Abdusalam Abubakar’s codebreaker project that took top prize in the Irish Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition in January, won lots of praise from the judges in Valencia where he was competing with 81 entrants from 30 countries including China and the US.

A third-year student in CBS Synge Street, Dublin, he tried to mathematically crack the world’s most hacker-proof encryption system to win the top prize of €5,000.