Success for Offaly schools at BT Young Scientists
There was success for Offaly schools at the 60th BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition (BTYSTE) this evening with local schools taking home a multitude of awards.
Pride of place went to Isobel McAuliffe and Eva Flynn of Tullamore College, who were 1st in the senior group health and wellbeing category with their project 'The Wrist Assist'.
Their school colleague Daniel Scally was highly commended for his project, '"Ah Sure Go On, What Harm Could It Do?” – An Investigation into the Toxic Effects of Vaping' in the Biological and Ecological category.
There was a display award for Leah Smyth and Lucy Crowley of St Brendan's Community School in Birr for their project, Paw Preference.
Seán O’Sullivan, aged 17, a 5th year student from Coláiste Chiaráin in Limerick, won the overall top prize with his project, VerifyMe: A new approach to authorship attribution in the post-ChatGPT era. The BTYSTE perpetual trophy was presented to the winner this evening at the RDS by Minister for Education, Norma Foley TD and Managing Director of BT Ireland, Shay Walsh.
Since OpenAI released ChatGPT in November of 2022, the line between human-written and AI-generated text has blurred, leaving academia and industry searching for a reliable method to discern “true” human authorship. In his project, Seán considered the challenges of author verification in the context of the significant improvements in Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT. He developed a novel approach to author authentication that identifies stylistic differences to verify authorship.
Chair of the Technology Group Judging Panel, Leonard Hobbs said,: “The judges were hugely impressed by Sean’s innovative approach to addressing a problem that has only recently emerged and his programming skills in architecting a complex software solution.”
Seán is the 60th recipient to win the highly coveted trophy, and the top prize of €7,500. Seán will now also represent Ireland at the European Union Contest for Young Scientists (EUCYS) taking place later this year in the European City for Science 2024 - Katowice, Poland.