Limerick student wins young scientist award
A Limerick student who designed a new computer programming language tonight won the Esat BT Young Scientist of the Year.
Patrick Collison, 16, of Castletroy College beat off a record number of entries in the 2005 competition with his winning project, “CROMA: a new dialect of LISP”.
The fourth-year pupil was presented with his award by President Mary McAleese at a ceremony at Dublin’s RDS.
He received a cheque for €3,000, a Waterford Crystal trophy and the chance to represent Ireland at the European Union Contest for Young Scientists in Moscow in September.
Judging panel chairperson Angela Keegan said the project was “imaginative and significant”.
Patrick’s new programming language, CROMA, is an enhancement of LISP, originally developed 50 years ago.
“CROMA is a powerful, general-purpose language in which web applications can be written more quickly,” the judges said.
A total of 1,049 students from 30 Irish counties presented 480 projects at this year’s Young Scientist exhibition which closes tomorrow evening.
Up to 40,000 students, teachers, parents and members of the public will have visited by then.
