Trinity Students Excel in International Undergraduate Awards
Posted on: 17 December 2015
Recent Trinity Graduate, Ruth Murphy, was among just 25 Overall Winners of The Undergraduate Awards (UA), who received Gold Medals from President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, at an international medal presentation ceremony in November.
Ruth who graduated earlier this year with First Class Honours in European Studies received the Gold Medal award for her paper titled ‘Revelations of an Anti-Genesis: the Muselmann, Primo Levi and Viktor Frankl’ in the Social Sciences category.
A further eight Trinity students and graduates were recognised as Programme Winners, meaning their work was among the best research produced at the undergraduate level on the island of Ireland last year and 38 received High Commendations. Trinity ranks in the top three institutions for its student performance in the 2015 Undergraduate Awards Programme worldwide.
The Undergraduate Awards is the world’s largest academic awards programme, recognising excellent research and original work across the sciences, humanities, business and creative arts. This year the programme received 5,117 submissions from undergraduates in 255 universities across 39 countries. The awards are cited as the ultimate champion of high-potential undergraduates, and often referred to as a “junior Nobel Prize”,
The winners from Trinity are:
Ruth Murphy, Overall Winner in the Social Sciences category;
Daniel Kelly, Programme Winner in the Chemical & Pharmaceutical Sciences category;
Ronan O’Connor, Programme Winner in the Economics category;
Pamela Holmes, Programme Winner in the History category;
Niamh McShane, Programme Winner in the Languages & Linguistics category;
Yewhoan Hong, Programme Winner in the Law category;
Aisling McHugh, Programme Winner in the Medical Sciences category;
Matthew Malone, Programme Winner in the Music, Film, Theatre & Art History category;
Veronica Mariz Pinto Scalco, Programme Winner in the Nursing & Midwifery category.
The Gold Medal Presentation Ceremony was part of a four-day UA Global Summit, which brought the winners and other top performers of The Undergraduate Awards 2015 programme from around the world to Ireland to recognise their achievement and encourage cross-discipline and cross-border collaboration.
The UA Global Summit 2015 featured talks and workshops run by philosopher AC Grayling, astrophysicist Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, genome sequencer Craig Ventor, the Guinness World Record-holder for World’s Youngest University Professor, Alia Sabur, and many more. The event gathered 150 of the top performing entrants to The Undergraduate Awards 2015: the 25 winners and 125 Highly Commended Entrants.
“Trinity College Dublin is the only Irish university with an Overall Winner this year, and has more Programme Winners than any other university in the programme,” commented Louise Hodgson, Executive Director of The Undergraduate Awards. “Ruth and the Programme Winners have done extraordinarily well to receive this medal, which places them as leaders in their research fields. And Trinity continues to uphold an excellent reputation in our awards programme.”