A team of three Irish students have beaten off stiff competition to become one of five global finalists for their age category in the Google Science Fair 2014.

Ciara Judge, Emer Hickey and Sophie Healy-Thow from Kinsale Community School, Cork have been chosen from thousands of competitors to the online contest from across the world.

As part of their winning research, the trio investigated the use of natural bacteria to assist food production by increasing crop output.

The project submitted by the young scientists will compete in a final event at Google’s San Francisco HQ and the winner will be chosen by a panel of judges.

The below video gives an overview of the development of the project, showing that natural bacteria in the roots of plants such as peas and clover could improve the growth of other valuable food crops such as wheat, oats and barley.

To promote the talent of the entries and to choose the project most likely to ‘change the world’, Google has now opened an online global public vote which will be run until September 14th . It can be accessed on the Google Science Fair website www.googlesciencefair.com.

Ciara, Emer and Sophie have previously competed in and won both the 2013 BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition and the EU Contest for Young Scientists.

They are currently preparing to head to San Francisco for the Google Science Fair finals on 19th September.

Online Editors