The youngest winner yet of the Young Scientist of the Year competition was crowned in Dublin tonight.
Aisling Judge (14), from Kinsale Community School, Co Cork developed a kit to indicate when food had gone off.
The second year student from Kinsale won a cheque for €5,000 and a Waterford Crystal trophy. She will represent Ireland at an EU-wide contest in Sweden in September.
She had entered the Biological & Ecological Sciences category with the project: "The development and evaluation of a biological food spoilage indicator."
The judges said: "This very impressive project demonstrated to us a highly innovative and creative use of experimental biology, together with a very novel use of technology."
Aisling beat off competition from 500 projects at the 42nd annual event at the RDS venue. Projects ranged from research into the strength of a snail to what causes tornados and hurricanes.
Presenting the award, Minister for Education and Science Mary Hanafin paid tribute to all the participants and their teachers for making a success of the Exhibition, sponsored by BT.
"Each of you will leave with the joy of discovering something new about science or the world we live in today," she said.
The minister explained that science and technology was vital to the future prosperity of the country. "Irish scientists have made major contributions to the world of knowledge over the past 200 years and I am confident that the young scientists here today will play their part and continue this important work."
Ms Hanafin also pointed out that recent developments in science education were making a difference to the primary and secondary school curriculums.
The award for individual runner-up went to Gohar Abbasi from Synge Street CBS, Dublin for his project entitled "Efficient parameterisation of the binomial option pricing model" entered in the Intermediate Section of the Chemical, Physical & Mathematical Sciences category. He was awarded €1,000 and a BT Perpetual Trophy.
Best Group were named as Keith Florea, Adrian Chisa and Sandeep Sihag, from Synge Street CBS, Dublin 8 for their Chemical, Physical & Mathematical project in the Senior Section entitled "Estimation of simulation error in the Kepler problem using hodographs."
They received a prize of €2,000 and a BT Perpetual Trophy.
The runner-up group were named as Tara McGrath, Vanessa McGrath and Nicola Woodgate from Presentation Secondary School, Loughboy, Co Kilkenny. They were awarded €1,000 euro and a BT Perpetual trophy for their project entitled "Inventing Machine - Fun Triz For Kids" entered in the Intermediate Section of the Technology category.