The final part of European Union Contest for Young Scientist 2024 (EUCYS) is behind us. During the concluding ceremony, which took place on 13 September at the Silesian Museum, European Union prizes were presented to the winners.
143 talented school and university students aged 14 to 20, from 37 EU countries and beyond, took part in the contest. On 10–12 September, at the seat of the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, we could see their unique projects that are a response to the most important challenges of the modern world.
First prizes in the amount of EUR 7,000 were received by:
- Lamia Music from Austria for the project “Sustainable and Advanced Approaches to Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells” – the aim of the study was to provide a comprehensive view of both the current development of dye-sensitized solar cells and future technologies, as well as to assess the importance of each parameter with respect to the overall energy conversion efficiency.
- Nikhil Vemuri from USA for the project “ANOMaLY: A Real-Time Globalized System for Effective Regional Mitigation of Agricultural Nitrous Oxide Emissions” – the system developed in this project identifies nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions in real time around the world, enabling rapid reductions in overall emissions.
- Piotr Olbryś from Poland for the project “Design of new pyrene-4,5,9,10-tetraone-based heterocyclic derivatives as high-capacity organic cathode materials: a density functional theory study” – the author designed new derivatives of PTO materials and examined their properties, which can serve as a basis for creating a new generation of ecological batteries.
- Aleksandra Petkova from Bulgaria for the project “Theoretical and Experimental Investigation of Ship Wakes” – the initiative allowed for a new study of the generation and characteristics of ship wakes and the formulation of a new theory on wake angles.
Second prizes in the amount of EUR 5,000 were received by:
- Seán O’Sullivan from Ireland for the project “VerifyMe: A new approach to authorship attribution in the post-ChatGPT era” – a programme that allows you to distinguish text written by a human from content generated by artificial intelligence using an innovative, stylometry-based authorship verification system.
- Adam Kovalcik from Slovakia for the project “Design and synthesis of new green furan-based hemisynthetic perfumeric compounds derived from agricultural waste” – development of a new ecological industrial process for the production of furfural without side waste, allowing to achieve a reduction of CO2 emissions by up to 2,400%.
- Leon Verreijt from the Netherlands for the project “Designing, building, and testing a multi-wire proportional chamber” – a study describing the development of a home-made Multi-Wire Proportional Chamber (MWPC), a detector that can collect data from ionising particles.
- Ann Wang from Canada for the project “Eradicating Cystic Fibrosis Biofilms by a Novel Non-Toxic, Multi-Pathway Salicylate Therapy” – a study focusing on the use of salicylates (such as aspirin) to reduce cystic fibrosis biofilm growth.
Third prizes in the amount of EUR 3,5 were received by:
- Angela Cao from Canada for the project “S2S: AI-Powered Translation Between Sign and Spoken Languages” – the initiative, designed for people experiencing hearing loss, proposes an innovative SLT model that enables users to translate ASL syntax and spoken English by developing and fine-tuning multiple large-scale linguistic and statistical models.
- Nicolas Dominic Huber from Switzerland for the project “Pushing the Limits – Active Safety in Paragliding” – the initiative presents a comprehensive approach to increasing the safety of paragliders during flight based on new numerical models of specific airspace situations.
- Kamilė Milkintaitė from Lithuania for the project “Towards Improved Brain Tumor Treatment: Novel Therapeutic and Diagnostic Targets” – study to improve outcomes for glioma patients by identifying new glioma biomarkers for gene therapy and early diagnosis, while investigating their molecular mechanisms.
- Márton Krisztián Hegedűs from Hungary for the project “Photocatenane – Robotics on the Molecular Level” – research focusing on a photoresponsive supramolecular entity, specifically photofunctionalised catenane.
The Special Jury Prize was awarded to:
- Ido Somekh i Leonardo Magnani from Luxembourg for the project “AllergyScan” – a system designed for people with food allergies and their families that uses QR codes on food packaging to provide immediate information about allergens through a transparent mobile application and thus simplify the process of understanding product labels.
The presented prizes also included prizes of universities of the Academic Consortium Katowice City of Science:
The Medical University of Silesia Prizes:
- Aleksander Zieliński from Poland for the project “Impact of the ability to block the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases with newly designed Fab domains of anti-Baff, anti-April antibodies”;
- Ridhima Pal from Denmark for the project “BMI vs. Body Fat Percentage”;
- Ann Wang from Canada for the project “Eradicating Cystic Fibrosis Biofilms by a Novel Non-Toxic, Multi-Pathway Salicylate Therapy”.
The Silesian University of Technology Prize:
- Ediz Osman from Germany for the project “Pioneering the Development of a Carbon-Free VTOL Jet for Civil Aviation”.
The University of Economics Prize:
- Mohamed Abdalla and Mohamed Farrag from Egypt for the project “Mouseless Mouse”.
The University of Silesia Prizes:
- The Silesian Science Festival KATOWICE Prize:
- Yujeong Ha from South Korea for the project “Innovating Crop Protection: Jeju Soil Bacteria-Powered Sea Breeze-Responsive Vaccine System”.
- The Transform4Europe Alliance Prizes:
- Nora Lara Artico from Switzerland for the project “Bacteriophages: a glimmer of hope in medicine – when antibiotics fail to treat bacterial infections”.
- Annika Moppel from Estonia for the project “Russia’s Propaganda in the Information War: The Examples of the First Crimean Bridge Explosion and Propaganda Used by Rossiyskaya Gazeta”.
- Nicolas Dominic Huber from Switzerland for the project “Pushing the Limits – Active Safety in Paragliding”.
In addition to cash prizes, the authors of the winning projects received prestigious scholarships and were invited to visit global research centres, including institutions associated with the European scientific and research organisation EIROforum, including the CERN centre (European Organisation for Nuclear Research) and ESA (European Space Agency).
A detailed list of all winners is available on the EUCYS 2024 website.
Photos from the EUCYS 2024 finals are available on Flickr.
Congratulations to the winners! We wish all of you many further successes in your scientific careers!
Photoreport: us.edu.pl/multimedia/eucys-katowice-2024