SciFest@TCPID 2024 in association with Abbott
On Thursday May 30th the Trinity Centre for People with Intellectual Disabilities hosted our annual SciFest@TCPID 2024 student exhibition and awards in association with the incredible team from Abbott. The event once again took place in Regent House in Trinity College Dublin. Nine TCPID students displayed their projects at the event.
We were delighted to welcome our TCPID Business Partners, guests from across Trinity College, graduates of the TCPID and the students' families and friends to join us for this very special event.
This is our 8th year of working with Abbott and our 6th year of doing the SciFest@TCPID programme together. This year we had the largest number of Abbott volunteers ever, with 17 amazing Abbott colleagues taking part and supporting our students. Our Thursday mornings working on the projects together in the TCPID were the highlight of every week.
A huge thank you to the 17 Abbott mentors who gave up their time to work with our students every week - Rachelle Waters, Kelly O'Sullivan, Kate Peters, Ronan Mac Donell, Patrick O'Rourke, Roseleen Murphy, Kinga Wilczynska, Brid Burns, Erika Dovgalyte, Emmanuella Afolabi, Upama Ghosh, Cian Quigley, Eoin Doherty, Jack Gorman, Rosemary Clarke and Denise Hannigan. Particular thanks goes to Amy Jayne Shrahan, who managed and coordinated everything within Abbott over the past few months. We are all so, so grateful to you AJ!
Thank you as always to the SciFest founders Sheila and George Porter who we love doing this with every year.
During the event, the students were all presented with awards by SciFest and Abbott Ireland.
At the end of the awards presentation, Dale O'Neill, the 2nd year class rep, gave a wonderful speech to thank everyone involved in SciFest@TCPID on behalf of all his classmates. He had a particular mention for Dr. John Kubiak who is retiring later this year from the TCPID. Dale thanked John on behalf of all his class for everything that he has taught them and for all the help that he has given them over the past 2 years. Dale then read a poem that he had composed himself about John.
TCPID student Gillian Cronin then read out her own poem, entitled 'Fond Farewell' which she had written for John. The poem included this brilliant piece of text:"Goodbye to tension and hello to your pension."
We are so proud of all the students, Dale, Saoirse, Conor, Emma, Shannon, Gillian, Rebecca, Seadna, Darragh and of course Conor Lynch who produced a beautiful SciFest@TCPID brochure with the help of TCPID Research Coordinator Jenny Banks.
We are already looking forward to SciFest@TCPID 2025!
TCPID Student, Dale O'Neill said: “What can I say about the amazing Abbott team what an absolute pleasure to work with and to get to know you over the last 5 weeks. Thank you so much for supporting TCPID for so long and for giving people like me a chance because if we didn’t have people like you supporting me I don’t where I would be in life. A very special thank you has to go to my 2 mentors Roseleen and Jack. It was an absolute pleasure working with you it was really great fun every week. I think we put together a pretty amazing project! I couldn’t have done it without you. ”
TCPID Student, Emma McGrath said: “To all the Abbott team thank you so much for the last few weeks I really enjoyed the Thursday mornings. They were great fun. Thanks for all the treats in each of the sessions. Eoin and Erika thank you both so much for helping with my project over the last few weeks it been really nice and fun working with you guys. I really appreciated your help on the project. I really enjoyed Scifest. It was a great day. ”
TCPID Student, Saoirse Keogh said: "It was so nice to meet all of the Abbott people that came down to TCPID to come and help all of my classmates. Everyone was so lovely to speak to and asking everyone on what they have done with their projects. I just want to say a big thank you for all of the help that you have given us and especially for bringing the donuts and treats every week. It was just so nice to have met everyone. I just wanted to say a big Thank You to Ronan and Kinga for all the help that they have given me for my SciFest project. It was so lovely to have met them and to have the laughs with them."
See some of the highlights from SciFest@TCPID 2024 in the video below:.
