SCIFEST EZINE December 2013
SciFest@SFI Discover Special Edition, Volume 5, Number 2
St Paul’s College Raheny student picks up top prize at SciFest 2013 Winner to represent Ireland at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) 2014 in Los Angeles “The students exhibiting to-
Raheny student Paul Clarke picked up the top prize at SciFest@SFI Discover 2013, the
day represent the brightest
national final of SciFest 2013, held on 22 November in the Science Gallery, Trinity Col-
young science minds in the
lege, Dublin. Paul’s discovery has taken us a step closer to solving the Travelling Sales-
country; they have excelled at
man Problem, also known as the Hamiltonian Cycle Problem, which has applications in business models including computer routing and networking. Professor Mark Ferguson, Director General of Science Foundation Ireland and Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government presented Paul with his prize – the SciFest@SFI Discover Trophy and a trip to Los Angeles where he will represent Ireland at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) 2014.
their respective SciFest@College events and are already winners in their regions. All students should be extremely proud of themselves for reaching this stage
of SciFest.
Paul adopted a theoretical approach with a focus on theorem-proving techniques to de-
Prof. Mark Ferguson,
velop an algorithm for the Hamiltonian cycle problem. He presented the final algorithm
Director General of Science Foundation Ireland and
using the Python programming language. Paul also reported on the application of his re-
Chief Scientific Adviser to
sults in other areas of computer science and maths. He also investigated a number of
the Government
other problems, including the traveling salesman problem and the problem of counting Hamiltonian cycles in graphs.
In This Issue
SciFest 2013 National Final Award winner Paul Clark with Prof. Mark Ferguson
1
•
SciFest@SFI Discover Finalists
•
SciFest@SFI Discover Chemistry Finalists
•
SciFest@SFI Discover Award Winners
•
SciFest 2014
•
Contact us