Four recent NUI Galway grads received gold medals from the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, having won various categories in the 2012 Undergraduate Awards recently. The Ireland-based academic awards programme identifies top students across the island of Ireland for their innovative undergraduate research. 

The awards ceremony marked the culmination of the Undergraduate Awards Summit, an annual three-day event in Dublin, Ireland that brought together some of the world’s most impressive budding academics. These are the top performing entrants in this year’s Undergraduate Awards programme, which received 2,890 submissions from third level institutions on the island of Ireland as well as elite universities primarily in the UK, USA, Canada and Ireland.

Addressing the attendees, patron of the awards programme President Higgins commended the students on their remarkable achievement. “All of the submissions being recognised here today are a reassuring reminder of the great wealth of innovative and imaginative talent that exists amongst our young people – the leaders, policy makers, scientists and artists of the future. I would like to congratulate all of our awardees here today and wish them every success.”

A “junior Nobel Prize”, the Undergraduate Awards is an initiative that aims to identify and connect the world’s top students, while also running a separate programme throughout all third level institutions on the island of Ireland. With 20 categories, it recognises excellence and innovation across the sciences, humanities and creative arts.

The four recent graduates who were recognised for undergraduate coursework conducted at NUI Galway were: Neasa O’Callaghan, who won the Ancient & Classical Studies for her essay ‘Mapping Europa from Antiquity to Present: Contrasting Images of an Abductee and Queen’; Isaac Burke, who won the Mathematical & Physical Sciences category for his project ‘Finding a Non-Broken Circuit Basis for the Orlik-Solomon Algebra of an Arrangement of Hyperplanes’; Cathal Kelly, who won the Engineering & Mechanical Sciences category for his project ‘Phosphorous Removal From Wastewater Using Pyrrhotite’; and Marek Bohacek, who won the Psychology category for his essay ‘Process Timing and its Relations to the Perception of Tonal Harmony: an EEG Study’.

Louise Hodgson, Programme Director of the Undergraduate Awards said: “Every year the Undergraduate Awards has recognised outstanding students and graduates, but I think our winners today are the most impressive bunch so far. Congratulations to them all! I know they’ll go on to be leaders and pioneers in their fields, and I’m glad the Undergraduate Awards can be one of the first to recognise their work.”

ENDS