Another important distinction was achieved by 3 students from Ioannina, representing our country in the 30th European Contest for Young Scientists 2018 (EUCYS 2018), in Dublin. In the Competition, in which 88 delegations from 39 countries participated, Paraskevi-Marina Kandreli, a student of the General Lyceum of the Zosimaia School of Ioannina, Konstantinos Lolos from the 7th General Lyceum of Ioannina and Nikolaos-Panagiotis Kalambokis, a graduate of the same school, won the special prize “Eurofusion-Jet”, with the proposal “AGM Algorithm Guided Modular Probe” (Algorithmically Directed Compartmentalized Explorer).

AGM is an innovative tool that has the ability to be used in many different missions. The explorer can land autonomously at a predefined location and carry out a wide range of missions there.

By winning the special prize of the Competition, the children won the right to visit Eurofusion’s workshops in Calham, England, within the next year and a half. One of the world’s largest nuclear fusion experiments is being carried out there and the team from Greece will have a unique opportunity to see the project up close and learn about sensor and fusion technology from experts involved in the experiment.

The three students, with the help of other students and teachers from the public schools of Ioannina, have been working on this project for two years, constantly developing it. In fact, this is not the first time they have excelled in a competition. The project(Zephyrus II), in the last two years, from its initial form to its final form as presented at the European Competition in Dublin, has received significant domestic and international awards. The team has so far won the third national prize in a space science competition in Greece in 2017, as well as the bronze medal in the category of engineering at the World Young Scientists Competition held in Belgrade in 2018.

The Competition

The European Contest for Young Scientists is an institution with a strong impact at European and international level as it highlights future top scientists. Since 1989, when the European Commission established the competition, the aim of the event has been to identify talented young people, encourage collaboration between young scientists and give them the opportunity to be mentored by some of Europe’s most prominent researchers. It is an event with a wide range of participants from all the Member States of the European Union, but also from the United States, China, Russia, Canada, South Korea, etc.

In this year’s competition, which was attended by 135 young scientists aged 14 to 20, a total of 88 projects were presented and evaluated by a panel of experts. The winners of the Competition were awarded a total of €57,500, while some entries were awarded special prizes and educational travel prizes.

The first three prizes of the Competition, worth €7,000 each, were awarded, in order, to Adrian Fleck and Anna Amelie Fleck, from Germany, for the project “FleckProtec – Body Protection Made From Starch”, to Canadian Nicolas Federico for the project “Improving Spinal Fusions: Redesigning the Pedicle Probe to Prevent Vertebral Breaches” and to Brendon Matusch, also from Canada, for the project “Development of a Level 2 Autonomous Vehicle Using Convolutional Neural Networks and Reinforcement Learning”. Three prizes of €5,000 each were also awarded to young scientists from France, the Estonia and Portugal. Finally, teams from Georgia, South Korea and China wonthe third prize of €3,500 each.

It should be noted that apart from the Greek team, another important distinction was also won by a group of students from Cyprus with their project: “Plastics in the marine environment of Cyprus: monitoring and potential bioremediation strategies”.

The winners of the competition received their prizes at a special ceremony in Dublin from the Irish Minister for Education Mary Mitchell O’Connor and Wolfgang Burtscher, Deputy Director-General for Research and Innovation of the European Commission.