A Ballybofey woman has been honoured for her reserach work by President Michael D Higgins.
Fiona McCauley was honoured at today’s prestigious 2012 Undergraduate Awards Ceremony held in the Great Hall, Royal Hospital Kilmainham, in recognition of her outstanding academic research.
Ms McCauley was joined by a further 38 winning students from across Europe, the USA, Canada and Asia.
The awards ceremony marked the culmination of the Undergraduate Awards Summit, an annual three-day event that brings some of the world’s most impressive budding academics, entrepreneurs and achievers to Dublin.
Addressing the attendees, patron of the awards programme, President Higgins commended the students on their remarkable achievement.
“All of the submissions being recognised here today are a reassuring reminder of the great wealth of innovative and imaginative talent that exists amongst our young people – the leaders, policy makers, scientists and artists of the future. I would like to congratulate all of our awardees here today and wish them every success.”
Hailing from Ballybofey, McCauley beat out international competition to be named as the winner in the Life Sciences category for her research paper Gene Silencing.
Returning to college as a mature student, McCauley recently graduated with a first class honours Degree in Bio-Analytical Science from LYIT.
She is currently studying for an MSc in Biomedical Science at University of Ulster, where her research focuses on the identification of micro-RNA biomarkers for prostate cancer.
A “junior Nobel Prize”, the Undergraduate Awards is an Irish initiative that aims to identify and connect the world’s top students.
This year’s Undergraduate Awards programme received over 2890 submissions from every third level institutions in Ireland and, among others, the top 10 universities in the world – including Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, and MIT.
With 20 categories, it recognises excellence and innovation in undergraduate coursework across the sciences, humanities and creative arts. Final and penultimate year undergraduate students can now register their intent to submit their coursework to the 2013 Undergraduate Awards at www.undergraduateawards.com.
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