A botany postgraduate student at Trinity College, Dublin has won this year's science and technology journalists' award. Mr Conor Meade was presented last week with an ICL computer by the Minister of State for Science and Technology, Mr Noel Treacy, at a Science Week Ireland event.
The all-Ireland competition is organised by the Irish Science and Technology Journalists' Association and sponsored by the information technology company ICL. It aims to promote and foster science journalism, and to encourage students to consider a career in science journalism.
The award-winning article reported on the GMO controversy and explored developments in Ireland in this field. It was published in Trinity News.
Entries this year were significantly up on previous years and came from a broad variety of sources including the print and broadcast media. It was also marked by an excellent standard. "It's a healthy measure of the growing public and media interest in science in Ireland," said the ISTJA president, Ms Mary Mulvihill.
ICL's marketing director, Mr Barry Hagan, added: "We are delighted to be associated with this successful competition, which has raised the profile of science and technology reporting and enabled many previous winners to pursue a career in this area."
Mr Patrick Ryan, a journalism student at Dublin City University, was runner-up with an article on caffeine published in the Sunday Business Post. Special commendations went to Mr Anthony Quinn, of Dublin Institute of Technology, for an analysis of Web search engines published in dot.ie and Mr Seamus Sweeny, a UCD medical student, for a feature on blood published in the University Observer.
