SciFest winner takes fourth place in biomedical engineering category at international science fair

A fifth year student living in Co Meath has came fourth place in her category in the biggest international pre-college science fair in the world. Maura Moore-McCune from Summerhill was inspired to create a phone app to help those with visual impairment to live more independent and safer lives.

This idea stemmed from Maura's own personal experience living with a visual impairment in her left eye which resulted in a close call she had with a car when she was younger.

SciFest STEM Champion 2024 Maura Moore-McCune from The King’s Hospital School, Palmerstown, Co Dublin, came fourth place in the Biomedical Engineering category at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) in Columbus, Ohio.

Regeneron ISEF, which took place from the 10 to 16 of May 2025, celebrating its 75th year running, is the world’s largest international pre-college science competition, involving almost 2,000 students from over 60 countries competing for a prize fund that totals in almost 9 million dollars.

Maura also won the Mawhiba Universal Enrichment Program Award. Mawhiba is a non-profit foundation in Saudi Arabia which encourages and motivates young people around the world to explore innovative methods in diverse fields of study. There were over 100 entries and projects in the Biomedical Engineering Category so this is an incredible achievement for Maura.

Maura secured her place in Regeneron when she won the overall award at SciFest 2024 National Final for her project which was titled ‘A Device for Detecting Fast Moving Objects for Use by the Vision Impaired.’

Maura’s idea started as an application on her phone coming from an experience she had first-hand as a child. Maura, who is vision impaired in her left eye, had a close call with a car when she was younger, which stuck with her throughout her life.

This sparked the idea to create an app that could help those with a decreased ability to see, and soon her idea became reality as she taught herself how to code. Four years ago, Maura created an app that detects and warns those who use it when a fast moving object such as a car or even an e-scooter is in close proximity.

The app promotes an easier, safer and more independent life for the visually impaired. What started with an app has developed into two design approaches, the use of an app and smart glasses. The app uses image classification to warn users of fast-moving objects, while the glasses use a YOLOv8 model on OpenCV to estimate object speed.

Maura went on to win her category at the BT Young Scientists Awards at just fourteen years old for the development of her application which she has named VIPMOD, which is an abbreviation of the words ‘Visually Impaired Persons Moving Object Detector.’

Speaking on the win, Maura said that she is incredibly grateful to have had the chance to attend and participate in Regeneron ISEF.

“It was an amazing experience to present my work and showcase my creativity on a global platform.”

Maura, who has just turned eighteen this year, is currently in her fifth year of school and hopes to go on to study biomedical engineering in university after her leaving cert next year. While the app is still not commercially available, Maura is still developing it so that it can be in the future.