Junior Cert students can now place themselves right in the heart of the World War One battlefield thanks to a virtual reality project which wowed judges at the TUS Moylish Scifest.

Zack Bannon Griffin and Luke O’Loughlin Byrne from Ardscoil Rís Secondary School won the regional heat of the contest thanks to their entry, ‘The Archive – Using VR to assist in Junior Cycle study’.

This project intends to aid those studying the Junior Cert by using virtual reality –and placing the user in several scenes of history and allowing them to experience these events.

For the project, they looked at World War One as their subject matter using the Godot game engine and the GDScript coding language.  

Describing their project, the students wrote: “To create the scenes of history we will be taking models off a website called Sketchfab and putting them together in a scene using a program called Blender. We are using an AI narrator to narrate these scenes so we don’t have to hire voice actors.”

TUS Moylish Scifest co-ordinator Dr Pauline Ryan said: “Every year I am so impressed by the high standard of research that goes into the entries; this year is no different.

“The quality of the research being done by the second-level students from across the region highlights the passion the students have for science, technology, engineering and maths.

“We are so proud to take part in SciFest, as it not only encourages the students to learn more about STEM but is all inclusive.”

Access issues for wheelchair users were investigated by the winner of the TUS Thurles Scifest 2025 competition

Luke Blackwell from Thurles CBS won the regional heat of the contest with his project titled A Statistical Analysis of Wheelchair Accessibility in Ireland and an Investigation into the Impact on Wheelchair Users’.