(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) If you think you're the ultimate science fanatic, think again. An Irish man has been organising science fairs for more than five decades, all in hopes of encouraging deeper studies, research and inventions in the field.
Tony Scott is renowned worldwide, especially in his home country of Ireland, for co-founding the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition. It's been running since 1965 and its participants have gone on to become successful innovators and billionaires. Patrick Collison, the founder of Stripe, an online payment portal similar to PayPal, was one of those students who took part in the exhibition once upon a time. He is now worth more than $1billion.
The Young Scientist model was recently used by the UAE, during its National Science, Technology and Innovation Festival, where an Emirati student won Dh25,000 for his Emergency Robot invention.
Now, the Ministry of Education and Scott's exhibition board (which is not-for-profit) have signed an agreement to use its model again next year.
"The quality of the Young Scientist is very important," Scott told Khaleej Times. "We have a board in Ireland that holds the right for Young Scientist. It's not for profit but it holds the copyright. What we do is allow other countries to ask us if they can use the model of the Young Scientist. For example, we've been running in Tanzania for six years. This year, we'll be running one in Kenya. When we sign an MoU, we give them access to all our plans, our paperwork and our designs - just so they don't have to reinvent the wheel again. The model is there for them to use."
Scott shared some exhibtition's participant success stories who invented projects which have earned them a name for themselves.
He spoke about teenage students who discovered a calming technique for race horses.
"There are two girls who did a project on how horses suffer gastric ulcers before races. The horses get very anxious, so they don't perform very well. The girls discovered some natural product that you can add to the feed, which prevents the horses from getting the ulcers," he said. "They started making this and they've set up their own company. They employ 15 people, including someone here in the UAE. They ship out their product to 15 countries, including five royal families... and these girls are still in school."
Scott also shared a success story of a 15-year-old student who invented an antibiotic from blackberry leaves, which he found in his own backyard.
"The problem is that a lot of illnesses are resistant to antibiotics, because we've used so much of it. This new one seems to have broken that mould," he added.
Scott believes science fairs have evolved significantly over the past five decades, with students being offered more convenient ways of conducting research, thanks to technology. "In the early days, they had very simple equipment and they got their background knowledge from the local library; nowadays, libraries are available on their fingertips," he said.
"The second thing is: equipment have become very sophisticated. The experiments have become even more sophisticated and the understanding of the students have developed quite considerably over the last 54 years."
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