Taken from our Winter 2014 issue. Subscribe here to have our Spring issue delivered direct to your door.
Ireland’s Inspiring Teens
By Elva Carri
In early November, technology news site Silicon Republic hosted an evening called Women Invent, with a line up of incredible speakers and coinciding with the Web Summit. Amongst these speakers were three remarkable Irish girls who recently made it onto Time’s list of the 25 most influential teenagers in the world.
Sara O’Dea, CEO at Silicon Republic interviewed Ciara Judge, Sophie Healy-Thow and Emer Hickey live on stage. The three girls together won the BT Young Scientist award for 2014 with a formula that helps solve a global food shortage.
Diazotroph is a bacteria that sucks nitrogen from the atmosphere into soil and speeds up the germination of cereal crops, increasing their yield at a very low cost to farmers. The girls told Ms. O’Dea that numerous top scientists had told them it couldn’t be done. Their response? “Well if you haven’t tried it, how do you know it doesn’t work?”
Speaking eloquently at the event, they noted with much gratitude the people who had helped them, such as their science teacher who came in outside of hours to work on the project, bringing along his daughter who they helped to babysit while they all worked away and cited previous BT young scientist winners amongst the people who had inspired them.
When the three girls aren’t collectively leaving roomfuls of adults awestruck, they’re busy inspiring children and teens at the Web Summit’s School Summit and working on a digital agenda for Ireland with the Digital Youth Council amongst a host of other engagements. They make changing the word look effortless.
@emerhickk – @SophieHealyThow – @CiaraFudgyJudgy
Taken from our Winter 2014 issue. Subscribe here to have our Spring issue delivered direct to your door.
