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| In recent years the name of Synge Street CBS has never been far from the headlines when it came to the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition. The roll of honour has been little short of spectacular. Our recent major results include TWO overall winners (Ronan Larkin in 2004 and Abdusalem Ababakar in 2007) as well as Intel Travel Award winners on no less than THREE occasions! Indeed Abdul went on to take the European Young Scientist Award in September 2007. The mentor responsible for this run of success, Jim Cooke, decided to take some well deserved time out from his exertions this year ... just to give other schools some chance at the major awards! It looked like it would be the first year in recent times that we would have no entrant at the exhibition. Then Wale Hassan decided that he would not let us down. He approached the Principal for his help in putting a project together for the Senior Individual Section of the Social and Behaviour Category. His research, on AIDS Awareness among 100 young people in the Dublin 8 area, was accepted for the final stages of the Exhibition. This involved surveying 50 boys in the school and 50 girls from a local girls school. The analysis of the data included the use of SPSS a very sophisticated package for anlaysing information in the Social Sciences. THe very late notification this year meant that he was up against the clock to finish in time. The deadline is always very tight for such projects. He worked right through Christmas Holidays and only put the finishing touches to his poster on Monday, January 7th 2008. (Bear in mind that he had to set up his project on the following day!) The judging at the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition is very rigorous. Wale had three different judges, all expert in their own areas. He was simply magnificent throughout and he represented the school with distinction. He was relaxed yet confident. We didn't really know it but he was more than hopeful that he could become the first student from Synge Street CBS to get a 'podium' place in this extremely well represented category. On the night of the awards ceremony, it was a very proud principal who watched his protegee step up to receive his award for third place in the Senior Individual category. It goes without saying that the school community are very proud of his achievement. Next year we are thinking of not entering at all ... it seems that, for the moment at least, we can do no wrong! MM / BK |