FSH - Faculty of Science and Health header
Faculty of Science & Health
Srinidhi Karthik with Christine Loscher
Prof Christine Loscher with winner of the DCU STEM Innovators Award, Srinidhi Karthik from Athlone Community College. Image credit: Kyran O'Brien.

DCU Celebrates Innovation as Srinidhi Karthik wins ‘DCU STEM Innovators’ award at Stripe Young Scientist

Young Scientist DCU award winner
Dublin City University’s (DCU) faculties of Science and Health and Engineering and Computing marked a strong presence at the Stripe Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition (YSTE), sponsoring an award under the Chemical, Physical and Mathematical Sciences category.

Overall winner Aoibheann Daly credits DCU CTYI course as the inspiration for her project

The ‘DCU STEM Innovators award’ was presented to Srinidhi Karthik, from Athlone Community College, for her project ‘Enduring Learning Dynamics: A Novel Approach to Analyse and Improve Forgetting and Alignment Drift in Machine Learning’. The prize was presented on the main stage by Professor Christine Loscher, Professor of Immunology at DCU and a leading voice in Irish biotechnology.

Throughout the week, the DCU stand was a hive of activity, offering students a chance to test their physical and mental limits through a variety of interactive challenges including:

  • The Human performance lab: Students flocked to the “How high can you jump? Station, alongside grip strength and mid-thigh pull tests, using professional-grade equipment to measure power.
  • Bio-Discovery: In a hands-on biology demo, participants learned the fundamentals of genetics by successfully extracting the visible strands of DNA from strawberries.
  • ‘Is it real or AI?’: The QR code quiz challenged visitors to distinguish between human-generated and machine-generated content.
  • Mathematical puzzles: The classic tower of Hanoi puzzle tested logic and patience as students raced to move stacks of disks across three rods while maintaining their conical order.
  • The Bridge-building challenge: Students competed to build the sturdiest structures using only marshmallows and spaghetti.

As the exhibition has finished for another year, the focus now shifts to the 2026 academic intake, where many of this week's finalists inspired by the activities at the RDS, will begin their journey towards becoming the next generation of Irish scientists and engineers.

 

Overall winner Aoibheann Daly credits DCU CTYI course as the inspiration for her GlioScope project

Stripe YSTE winner Aoibheann Daly from Kerry, pictured with her mother Anne
Stripe YSTE winner Aoibheann Daly from Kerry, pictured with her mother Anne Photo: Stripe YSTE

Overall winner of the Young Scientist Aoibheann Daly from Mercy Secondary School, Mounthawk in Tralee, said that she was inspired to develop GlioScope, a diagnostic tool that aids faster and better treatment of brain cancer.

Speaking to RTÉ's Petula Martyn, she said

"A few years ago I did a [CTYI] course in DCU, where I was studying medicine for three weeks. We came across brain tumours there, specifically glioblastomas and it just shook me that the survival rate was so low. The five-year survival rate is just 5%.

I was learning to code at the same time and I was wondering if I could combine them, I suppose, to try and help."

You can read more about Aoibheann's project on the Stripe Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition website.