Crawley schools scoop top prizes at science awards

Students from schools in Crawley scooped several major prizes in the South East's most prestigious science and engineering competition for young people, with two groups going on to represent the region in the national finals next March.

Pupils from Oriel High School, Hazelwick, Gatwick School and St Wilfrid’s School picked up a number of awards – including that of regional Young Scientist of the Year, at the annual Big Bang Fair South East at the South of England Showground.

Amy Tarsitano from Oriel High School was named Gatwick Airport South East's Young Scientist of the Year for her project entitled: How do the other senses affect our perception of taste? The project also earned Amy the Photek Prize for Research and the University of Chichester Women in Science award.

Fellow Oriel student, Tai Gordon, won the Avensys Ltd Enthusiasm Award for a project that examined the variation of striking techniques between different species of praying mantis.

Meanwhile, a team comprising Sean Murray, Toby Lawrence and Owen Webster were runners-up in the Junior Science category of the Big Bang UK Young Scientists and Engineers Competition for their project 'Proximity Using Pulse'.  They will represent the region in the national finals next March, along with Year 11 students Shriya Chudasama and Chinazo Okeke from Saint Wilfrids, who won the West Sussex County Council Prize for Entrepreneurism and the Intermediate Engineering category in the regional heat of the Big Bang UK Young Scientists and Engineers Competition for their project 'Plastic Pilot'.

They impressed judges by designing a drone that could scoop plastic waste from the oceans using plastic replacement materials.

Year 9 students from Hazelwick School, won the Eurotherm by Schneider Electric Prize for Commercial Potential for their project 'Lost and Found'. Matilda Noble, Alfie Matthews and Jash Limbachia developed a child tracker system that incorporated a GPS chip in a child's clothing and a mobile phone app.

Continuing this, Year 9 students from St Wilfrid's, Catherine Duggan-Jakes, Katelan Carter and Anneke Dodd won the Crawley Borough Council Prize for Creativity for their project 'Feel the World', in which they designed a shoe aimed at improving mobility for visually-impaired people.

Louis Hitchcock, a Year 12 student at The Gatwick School, won three  awards at the annual Big Bang Fair South East, at the South of England Showground, for his project “Multiple Drone,” designed to help in fire-fighting.

He was runner-up in the Intermediate category in the regional heats of the Big Bang UK Young Scientists and Engineers Competition, as well as winning the Ricardo Prize for Innovation and Technology and the Thermo Fisher Scientific Prize for Innovation.

The seventh annual Big Bang Fair South East and the regional Young Scientists and Young Engineers Competition were organised by STEM Sussex, the outreach support department of the University of Brighton.

Part of the nationwide Big Bang Near Me programme,  it is the biggest single celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) for young people in the UK, and over 10,000 students and their teachers from across the region attended.