Kerry teenager wins 2026 Young Scientist award with brain cancer treatment tool

A 15-year-old from County Kerry has been named the winner of the 2026 Stripe Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition for a tool that helps doctors improve the treatment of brain cancer.

Aoibheann Daly’s project GlioScope: Multi-task Deep Learning and Causal AI for Glioma & Glioblastoma Profiling allows doctors to predict what genetic mutations may be present in the brain using an MRI to make treatment quicker and easier for patients.

Doctors currently rely on taking samples of brain tissue, which is expensive and carries a high risk of bleeding in the brain.

Professor Catherine Darker, head judge for the Health & Wellbeing category said Aoibheann’s development is “an extraordinary achievement”.

“Aoibheann has brought together scientific areas of medicine with computer science to improve the chances of early intervention for people with brain cancer,” she said.

The Stripe YSTE trophy was presented to Aoibheann on Friday by Minister for Education, Hildegarde Naughton, and Stripe cofounder and former YSTE winner Patrick Collison.

In addition to receiving the grand prize of 7,500 euros, she will go on to represent Ireland at the European Union Contest for Young Scientists in Kiel in Germany in September 2026.

Aoife Fadian and Jessica O’Connor, fifth year students from County Sligo, were named Best Group, with their project Sheep Strength II: Using Sheep Wool to Reinforce Concrete.

Expanding on their work from last year, the pair investigated the most effective, market-friendly form of sheep wool as a strengthening agent for concrete.

The YSTE was founded in 1965 and attracts more than 40,000 visitors on average to the RDS in Dublin, making it one of the biggest events of its kind worldwide.

More than 1,000 students presenting 550 projects competed for more than 200 prizes throughout the week.

The projects were chosen from a pool of almost 2,000 entries.

A staple of the new year political calendar, the exhibition attracted high-profile politicians who came to inspect projects made by schools in their constituencies.

President Catherine Connolly officially opened the competition on Wednesday and a range of Cabinet ministers visited throughout the week.

Friday saw the attendance of Tanaiste Simon Harris as well as Taoiseach Micheal Martin, who had just returned from a days-long diplomatic visit to China.

The Fine Gael and Fianna Fail leaders spent hours interacting with secondary school students on the show floor, posing for photographs and interacting with projects.

Nearly a quarter of the projects use or examine artificial intelligence (AI), while environment and climate-related projects also feature heavily this year.

On the subject of AI, Mr Harris told reporters that he was “grappling” with whether politicians should deactivate their X account amid a controversy about the platform’s Grok tool which has been used to create sexualised images of people, including children.

He also said the company’s decision to move that capability behind a paywall would “clearly not” address the issue.

This year’s main sponsor is Stripe, which has taken over from BT Ireland after 25 years.

Stripe was founded by Irish brothers and former YSTE entrants John and Patrick Collison. Patrick won the competition in 2005 and attended the event on Thursday and Friday.

The tech firm, which operates a dual headquarters in Dublin and San Francisco, offers programmable financial services for millions of businesses to accept payments.

Mr Collison joined the Taoiseach as he walked around the exhibition hall.

One of the projects Mr Martin stopped at was the IronInsight app to promote haemochromatosis awareness, created by Transition Year student Ellen O’Shea at Ursuline College Blackrock, Co Cork.

Ms O’Shea’s project was part of a range of entries supported by the Teen Turn charity which is dedicated to providing teenage girls with hands-on Stem experience.

Meanwhile, 15-year-old disability campaigner Cara Darmody entered with a project examining misconceptions and misinformation about autism diagnoses.

Both Mr Martin and Mr Harris stopped to speak to the activist, who gained national attention with her campaign on the shortcomings in the assessment of needs system.