Bright Sparks - Midlands Stripe Young Scientist Winners Share Their Ideas
The Big Story
Tuesday, 13 January 2026 - 18 minutes
Students across the Midlands have scooped up prizes at this year's Stripe Young Scientist Exhibition.
Leaving Cert student at Portlaoise CBS Joshua Corbett is this years runner- up with his project ‘There’s Plenty of Room to Breakthrough at the Bottom’.
It looks at the use of AI to tackle pre-clinical failures and advance brain drug delivery - while Mr. Corbett was named the overall category winner for chemistry, mathematics and physics.
It's his second award after finishing second in the Senior Technology individual category last year.
Moate Community School's Rachel Coughlan gets the Kerry Sustainable Nutrition Award for creating a biogradeable chewing gum.
While Tullamore College's Killian Dromey and Rachel Carroll take home the top prize in Health & Wellbeing's Junior section.
Their winning entry focuses on how the natural pH of cabbage juice can be used to detect and track infections.
The students have been speaking with Midlands 103's David Hollywood about their projects,
