18-year-old Richard O’Shea, sixth year student in Scoil Mhuire Gan Smal, Blarney, Co Cork, has been named the winner of the 2010 BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition.

This is the second time that a student from the Blarney school has won the top award in this prestigious competition - in 1999, Sarah Flannery took top honours and went on to win the overall European young scientist contest. Her younger brother, Eamonn, also a pupil at Scoil Mhuire Gan Smal, won the junior individual section in 2006.

Richard O'Shea's winning project was titled "A biomass-fired cooking stove for developing countries".  Leonard Hobbs, the chief judge in the technology category, said:

"Richard received the prestigious honour for his pioneering work on the design of a biomass-fuelled cooking stove for use in developing countries. Over two billion people in the world depend on stoves to cook their meals every day, and his project built a new one which uses as little fuel as possible and which ideally produces no smoke.

"An added bonus is that his stoves can be built using simple tools such as a Swiss army knife."

At the awards ceremony held at the RDS Dublin on January 15, Richard was presented with a cheque for €5,000 and a Waterford Crystal trophy by Minister for Science, Technology, Innovation & Natural Resources Conor Lenihan, accompanied by Chris Clark, chief executive of BT Ireland.

Mr Clark said he believed "Richard’s innovative idea has huge potential to become a commercial success, and we hope the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition will prove the catalyst for this."

Minister for Education and Science Batt O’Keeffe congratulated Richard, describing the student’s biomass project as "visionary".

However, on Richard's return to school following the competition, he said he didn't want to make any money out of his invention, which is believed to have the potential to improve the health and lives of millions.

"What I want to do with my project is teach charities how to make it," the 18-year-old said.

Richard will now go on to represent Ireland at the 21st European Union Contest for Young Scientists taking place in Lisbon next September.  (Source: Irish Examiner)