{"id":274793,"date":"2026-01-08T21:39:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T21:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/274793\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T21:39:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T21:39:08","slug":"young-scientists-show-how-to-quiz-a-billionaire-and-ensure-politicians-feel-inadequate-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/274793\/","title":{"rendered":"Young scientists show how to quiz a billionaire and ensure politicians feel inadequate \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s no mean feat to give a politician an inferiority complex but that\u2019s just one of the things the entrants in the Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition <\/a>(YSTE) are good at. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just blown away by their ideas and their innovation,\u201d said Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee. <\/p>\n

She\u2019d just been on a tour of projects from schools <\/a>in her Co Meath constituency on topics such as visual-spatial reasoning, the implications of atmospheric drag for space missions and advanced methods of identifying autism. <\/p>\n

Minister for Arts Patrick O\u2019Donovan <\/a>was on a similarly vertiginous learning curve. \u201cI\u2019m coming here for over 20 years and they keep getting better and more impressive,\u201d he said of the entries. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd in our age group, you continue to feel more and more inadequate.\u201d <\/p>\n

Jim O\u2019Callaghan, Dara Calleary and Kieran O\u2019Donnell were also among the visiting Government Ministers to be humbled by the young participants, many of whom are some years off voting age yet. <\/p>\n

The students, meanwhile, took the attention all in their stride. Not even a head-to-head with a local boy turned billionaire could intimidate them. <\/p>\n

\"ParticipantsParticipants and visitors explore the exhibition at the RDS. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd <\/p>\n

In a question-and-answer session between Patrick Collison and the teenage audience, the one-time YSTE winner and global payments company founder was quizzed in depth about his motivations, methods and message to upcoming innovators. <\/p>\n

He had some insights to share, including that first impressions are not always right. <\/p>\n

\u201cI thought biology was terrible,\u201d he said of his schooldays bias. \u201cI thought it was just about memorisation and these 19th-century unlabelled sketches of animals. I was completely wrong.\u201d <\/p>\n

His company, Stripe, which sponsors the YSTE, also funds Arc, a non-profit research support organisation that is backing scientists working to solve tricky problems, many of them in the health field. <\/p>\n

Collison also said that going to college was not essential although he quickly clarified that he didn\u2019t advocate everyone dropping out like he and his brother and Stripe co-founder, John, did. <\/p>\n

Covering everything from traffic congestion to plants on the pill, the Young Scientist Exhibition offers a world of solutions to everyday issues. <\/p>\n

The keys to developing a successful company, he said, were creating something useful and loving doing it. <\/p>\n

Having employees, investors and obligations could all be demanding if the core activity wasn\u2019t fun. <\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not all about the money, he said, referring to the Google founder who retired but returned to work because he was bored despite having the means to buy anything that was purchasable on Earth or beyond. <\/p>\n

\"PatrickPatrick Collison at the event. Photograph: Bryan Meade <\/p>\n

Sharing experiences is part of the YSTE ethos and the reason why the contest has been replicated with Ireland\u2019s help in Jordan and Kenya. <\/p>\n

The Department of Foreign Affairs said it was also talking to other countries in Africa to see how they could be helped establish their own version. <\/p>\n

The winners from the Jordan and Kenyan contests received a trip to Ireland to take part in the YSTE. <\/p>\n

Kon Lual and Ian Mwadiloh from Eldoret in Kenya created Afronomy Chain, an online anti-corruption platform to track financial flows in public transactions. <\/p>\n

Jenna Al-Rashdan from Jordan developed a mobile device, ThrumboGuard, that detects deep vein thrombosis (DVT) using sensors placed in a sleeve that wraps around a patient\u2019s leg, which sends analysis to an app she also created. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe call DVT the silent killer because the symptoms are mild or vague, so people don\u2019t go to the hospital to get them checked out,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy aunt developed severe complications because she delayed getting help and if people don\u2019t have access to hospitals, they are even less likely to get medical treatment in time. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy device could be in clinics, doctors\u2019 surgeries, even in patients\u2019 homes if they are at risk.\u201d <\/p>\n

Jenna, it should be noted, is just 16 years old. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s no mean feat to give a politician an inferiority complex but that\u2019s just one of the things…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274794,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,6,14370,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,138284],"class_list":{"0":"post-274793","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-helen-mcentee","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-latest-news","18":"tag-latestnews","19":"tag-main-news","20":"tag-mainnews","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-top-stories","23":"tag-topstories","24":"tag-young-scientist-technology-exhibition"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115861649082062613","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}