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Sky's the limit for award-winner Fionn

May 30th, 2018 11:50 AM

By Southern Star Team

Fionn with one of his three awards at the Intel Science Fair in the US.

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A Schull student is only coming back down to earth after incredible success at a global science fair in the US, which will see an asteroid named after him. 

A SCHULL student is only coming back down to earth after incredible success at a global science fair in the US, which will see an asteroid named after him. 

Fionn Ferreira, a fifth year student at Schull Community College, had major success at last week’s Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, winning three awards. 

Following on from his BT Young Scientist successes earlier this year, Fionn, from Ballydehob, travelled to Pittsburgh with teacher Lara Kelly to represent Ireland at the world’s biggest science fair, which attracts the top young scientists from around the world. Approximately 1,800 students from over 80 countries attended, making Fionn’s achievement all the more extraordinary. Fionn took second place in the Chemistry category and, as a result, will have an asteroid named after him. 

One of the other awards presented to the student was a Special Award from the American Chemical Society with prize of ,000 and a scholarship to the University of Arizona.  

Fionn also won the Drug Chemical & Associated Technologies Association Award of ,000. 

Fionn’s award-winning project explores how micro plastics could be removed from water using ferrofluids and he measured his findings with a homemade spectrometer.

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