Fifteen projects from seven Meath schools represented at BTYSTE 2025

Fifteen projects from seven Meath schools will be showcased at the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition 2025, which takes place in the RDS from 8th-11th January.

More than 2,000 projects were entered for this year's competition and 15 projects from seven Meath schools were among the 550 to impress the judges and made it to the final.

St Joseph's Mercy, Navan, has once again demonstrated its commitment to excellence in STEAM education with four projects by Transition Year students among the finalists.

The four Mercy projects are: 'Mouth vs Nose: the Breath Battle' by Eppie Clarke and Saoirse McGovern, which explores the impact of breathing techniques on exam performance. 'Is your head in the game' by Maria Mcloughlin and Salomeja Slusnyte, which investigates the influence of mental warm-ups on camogie training performance.

'Feel the way' by Caroline Asiruvatham and Niamh Bonallie, which aims to create a visual aid to assist visually impaired individuals in navigating outdoor environments. 'Chess your IQ' by Manal Fantazi and Grace Gibbs, which examines the potential cognitive benefits of learning chess, focusing on the impact of age. The students were mentored by teachers Bronagh Farrell and Fiona Leavy.

Boyne Community School, Trim, has two projects in the final - 'How do the people around us affect our productivity?' and 'The Trial Of Dave', both of which are entered in the Social & Behavioural Sciences category.

Ava McEvoy and Zuzanna Pekala aim to answer the question, how do the people around us affect our productivity? Their goal was to figure out how productive our classrooms and workplaces were when we were around people we knew and people we didn’t. "Using an experiment we were able to conclude that students in groups of friends are more likely to engage in a classroom discussion but can be easily distracted and can have varying results. The group of strangers are quieter and easier to manage but can be difficult to get to engage with the class. The control group in this experiment observed a mix of both issues; less likely to engage and easily distracted. It is important for us to be around those we are familiar with as this can give us the confidence to participate and engage with the topics both in the classroom and in the workplace." they said.

Max Carty's project, 'The Trial Of Dave', is on the effect bias in the news can have on its viewers, and also looked at if age has any correlation to the susceptibility of bias.

"I sent out a Google form to first, third, and sixth years, and teachers. In the form, there was an article about a crash happening between two people, one of them being Dave. There are two versions of the Google Form, with the difference between them is whether the article is biased towards or against Dave. I then had them read a neutral article, and see if their opinion changed.

“The results showed that there is a clear effect, with few people changing their minds between the first and second article," said Max.

A team from Ashbourne Community School has qualified in the Technology category with their project 'Dickens vs Skynet: How Large is an LLM?'.

Adam McMahon and Alexander Douglas explored whether large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, use a wider vocabulary than the average human writer. By analysing how many unique words appear, that aren't on a list of the 1,000 most used words, the boys aim to uncover patterns that might differentiate AI-generated text from human writing. They are mentored by teacher Linda Ward.

Loreto Secondary School in Navan has qualified in the Technology section with 'Gamifying a fun approach to recycling and litter collection.'

Eureka Secondary School, Kells, has three projects in the final. 'Neuro-Logic: How accommodating are accommodations?' is entered in the Social and Behavioural Sciences category while 'Neuro Cognitive olfactory programming' is in the Health & Wellbeing section. 'Shining a light on stargardts disease' has also qualified in the Health & Wellbeing section.

St Patrick’s Classical School, Navan, has two finalists in the Technology section - 'The high lift ' and 'FutureDev'.

Coláiste na Mí in Johnstown, Navan, also has two projects in the final. 'Chemical compounds and their balance with nature with mushrooms' is in the Chemical, Physical & Mathematical Sciences category and 'Speechumpy' Speech Development App has qualified in the Social and Behavioural Sciences Group.

Over 4,000 students from 352 schools showcased their innovation and ingenuity through the 2,069 project entries received for the BTYSTE 2025, tackling a broad range of topics relating to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).