Congratulations to the Year 13 team which won the NI Young Engineers Award at the Sentinus Young Innovators Competition at UUJ on Tuesday 26th June.  The competition team of James McEvoy, Shruti Muthu and Cormac McCumiskey were awarded first prize after a tough judging process that pitched them against teams from across Ireland.

The winning product had been designed and built for Phoenix Natural Gas as part of the Sentinus Team R & D program.  The Aquinas team includes fellow year 13 pupils Matthew Barry and Niamh MacDermott, who worked along with Phoenix Natural Gas engineer Andrew Lyle to design and build a man hole cover lifter that requires no back bending.  Starting in September 2017, the team researched possible solutions to the problem then designed and built their product which they named “Lyle’s lifter”.  Capable of lifting cast iron covers over 70kg, the product achieved top marks in seven of the ten marking criteria at the Team R & D presentation day in Ballymena in April.  On the back of this success the team took the product to Jordanstown and came away with this prestigious award. 

Well done to the year 13 pupils on their success.