SciFest

When teachers see the impact firsthand, it says it all. 💙

We're delighted that 100% of surveyed teachers at both our local SciFest@School fairs and regional SciFest@College fairs agreed that participating in SciFest was a worthwhile learning experience for their students.

Thank you to every teacher who inspires curiosity, encourages innovation and makes STEM discovery possible in classrooms across Ireland. 🌟

Strong partnerships create meaningful opportunities, and we're proud to celebrate the impact of our partnership with Keenova.
During the 2025/2026 academic year, the Keenova STEM Excellence Award recognised 308 outstanding students across 126 SciFest@School fairs, celebrating creativity, innovation and excellence in STEM.

Congratulations to every award recipient, and thank you to Keenova for helping inspire and encourage the next generation of scientists, engineers and innovators. Together, we're empowering young people to explore their potential through STEM.

Jack’s Berlin Long Night of Science Experience

(By Jack McCormack, St. Joseph's College Borrisoleigh, Co. Tipperary
Berlin Long Night of Science Award Winner and the EirGrid Cleaner Climate Grand Award Winner, SciFest 2025 National Final)

Winning the Berlin Long Night of Science Award through SciFest was something I genuinely didn’t see coming, and when it sank in, I was thrilled. My Mam came with me as my travel companion, and we flew out of Dublin on Thursday morning, up at 4am, which wasn’t ideal, but hard to complain about given where we were headed.

We checked into the JFK Arcotel in the city centre, which was a great hotel, and got straight into exploring. We hired Lime scooters and headed to Markthalle Neun, a covered market in Kreuzberg, for lunch. From there we walked the East Side Gallery, the longest remaining stretch of the Berlin Wall, which was striking in a way that photos don’t really do justice to. The murals painted along it are powerful and thought-provoking. We then crossed the city through the Tiergarten and the Holocaust Memorial.

Friday morning we visited the Embassy of Ireland Berlin. This was a real highlight of the trip. We were met by Dr. Martin Wall, Head of Public Diplomacy and Press, and Roisin Martin, Assistant Public Diplomacy Officer. We talked about my VAWT project and about what the embassy does day-to-day, which was interesting. I knew very little about how an embassy operated and came away with a much better understanding of how important it is to facilitating Irish-German relations. We also got to meet Ambassador Maeve Collins, which was a great experience, and Deputy Ambassador James Kilcourse. Everyone there was very welcoming. Martin and Roisin also gave us their recommendations for the Long Night of Science, which turned out to be very useful.

The rest of Friday was spent sightseeing, up the Fernsehturm TV tower for a view of the whole city, then Alexanderplatz, the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. We tried currywurst and a Turkish kebab, and learned the döner kebab was actually invented in Berlin, which I found more interesting than I probably should have. We finished the night bowling in Potsdamer Platz.

Saturday morning we visited Museum Island, the Topography of Terror museum, Checkpoint Charlie, and Potsdamer Platz before the Long Night of Science kicked off at 5pm.

Our first stop was Humboldt University, where there were exhibits on biology and psychology, including work on children’s learning and a display on mammal skeletal anatomy. We spent about an hour and a half there looking around and talking to those presenting their work before taking the S9 train out to Adlershof.

In Adlershof we went first to DLR, the German Aerospace Centre, which had exhibits on astronaut training, new aircraft design, transport optimisation, robotics, and immersive space launch experiences. We then sat in on a 3D printing workshop at ST3AM Vista where participants were designing and printing clay vases using an FDM clay printer, something I had never come across before. After that we attended a lecture and demonstration of the RoboCup robots, fully autonomous bipedal robots playing football with no remote control involved whatsoever. Watching machines pass, shoot, tackle and save completely independently was something I won’t forget quickly.

The final stop of the night, and the best, was BAM, the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing. The range of what they had on show was remarkable: bridge monitoring and structural failure detection, machine learning in materials analysis, fluorescent pigments and colour theory, thermal imaging used to detect faults in wind turbine blades, ultrasound testing for delamination in steel, 3D printing, smartphone waterproofing development, and much more. What made it stand out wasn’t just the exhibits but the people running them, researchers and engineers who were enthusiastic about their work and happy to spend time explaining it in detail. I would have happily stayed far longer than we did.

Come Sunday we had a few hours before the airport and spent them walking through the art markets on Museum Island, catching some classical music being performed live for the island’s 200th anniversary, and picking up a few souvenirs at the Sunday markets near Potsdamer Platz.

It was a great four days. I’m very grateful to Sheila Porter and everyone at SciFest for making this possible, to the Irish Embassy in Berlin, particularly Ambassador Maeve Collins, Deputy Ambassador James Kilcourse, Dr. Martin Wall, and Roisin Martin, for organising everything so well, and to my teacher Mary Gorey and everybody else in St. Joseph’s College Borrisoleigh for encouraging me to get involved in SciFest in the first place and supporting me the whole way through my project. If you’re a student thinking about entering, I’d strongly recommend it.

Irish Science Teachers Association

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